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CURRENT THEMES IN IMER RESEARCH 13

CURRENT THEMES IN IMER RESEARCH

CURRENT THEMES
IN IMER RESEARCH
NUMBER 13
The Danish Muhammad Cartoon Conflict

Peter Hervik

Sweden
tel: +46 46 665 70 00
www.mah.se

MALM 2012

SE-205 06 Malm

MALM 2012

MALM UNIVERSIT Y

CURRENT THEMES
IN IMER RESEARCH
NUMBER 13

The Danish Muhammad Cartoon Conflict

Peter Hervik

PETER HERVIK, PhD in anthropology and Professor in Migration studies

Center for the Study of Migration and Diversity (CoMID)
Department for Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University
hervik@cgs.aau.dk

Current Themes in IMER Research

Number 13
editorial board Bjrn Fryklund, Maja Povrzanovi c Frykman, Pieter Bevelander,
Christian Fernndez och Anders Hellstrm
editor-in-chief Bjrn Fryklund
published by Malm Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversityand Welfare (MIM),
Malm University, 205 06 Malm, Sweden, www.mah.se/mim
Malm University & the author 2012
Printed in Sweden
Holmbergs, Malm 2012
ISSN 1652-4616 / ISBN 978-91-7104-438-9
Online publication, www.mah.se/muep

CONTENTS
ABSTRACT............................................................................ 5
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................ 6
INTRODUCTION................................................................... 8
CHAPTER1. THE CARTOON CRISIS AND THE
RE-POLITICALIZATION OF THE DANISH NEWS MEDIA............ 15
Denmark becomes unified .....................................................17
(Re)Politicizing the media.......................................................19
Amin - Jyllands-Postens Story.................................................21
The Mona Sheikh story of 2001 and Jyllands-Postens editorials .... 23
Cultural war of values...........................................................27
Incompatible cultural differences ............................................29
Kurt Westergaards terrorist drawings ..................................32
Conclusion...........................................................................35
CHAPTER 2. A STRUGGLE OF NEWS AND VIEWS:
ENTRY-POINTS TO JYLLANDS-POSTENS CARTOON STORY.... 37
The beginning of the cartoon story .........................................41
Jyllands-Postens project.........................................................43
Three Danish Frames of Interpretation......................................46
Blaming the imams................................................................52
The Hostile Danish Debate on Minorities..................................58
Conclusion...........................................................................63
CHAPTER 3. THE DANISH CARTOON CRISIS AND
THE DISCOURSE OF ETHNIC IDENTITY CONFLICT................. 66
The ambivalent use of the terms ethnic and ethnicity............67
The identity turn....................................................................69
The analysis of ethnic conflict .............................................70
Ethnic groups as ethnicized minorities..................................73
Muhammad cartoon conflict of 2005/6 as an ethnic conflict....77
Media consumers response...................................................79
Conclusion...........................................................................83

CHAPTER 4. DIALOGICAL OPPOSITION IN THE DANISH

GOVERNMENTS HANDLING OF THE MUHAMMAD
CARTOON CONFLICT......................................................... 84
Mocking and the refusal of dialogue.......................................85
Origins of Incompatibility......................................................86
Vicarious Dialogue in Egypt ..................................................89
Egyptian media coverage......................................................91
Staged Dialogue..................................................................95
Conclusion...........................................................................97
EPILOGUE......................................................................... 101
CHRONOLOGY OF MAIN EVENTS..................................... 107
SUMMARY........................................................................ 108
REFERENCES CITED........................................................... 111
Other Newspapers and news agencies.................................127
ENDNOTES...................................................................... 128

ABSTRACT
The Muhammad crisis, the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis, or The
Jyllands-Posten Crisis are three different headings used for the global,
violent reactions that broke out in early 2006. The cartoon crisis was
triggered by the publication of 12 cartoons in the largest Danish daily
newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005 and
the Danish governments refusal to meet with 11 concerned ambassadors. However, Jyllands-Postens record on covering Islam; the
ever growing restrictive identity politics and migration policies and
the popular association of Islam with terrorism made it predictable
that something drastic would eventually happen, although neither the
form of the counter-reaction or the stubborn anti-Islamic forces were
unknown. This collection of chapters seeks to fill out some of the most
glaring holes in the media coverage and academic treatment of the
Muhammad cartoon story. It will do so by situating the conflict more
firmly in its proper socio-historical context by drawing on the authors
basic research on the Danish news medias coverage of ethnic and
religious minorities since the mid 1990s. The author uses thick contextualization to analyze this very current theme in IMER studies, which
has consequences for most immigrants of non-Western countries to the
Nordic countries.
Keywords: Muhammad Cartoons, Jyllands-Posten, ethnic conflict,
freedom of speech, spin communication.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE:
Peter Hervik, PhD in anthropology, docent in IMER, Professor in
Migration studies at the Centre for the Study of Migration and
Diversity (CoMID), Department of Culture and Global Studies, at
Aalborg University, Denmark.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Several institutions and individuals have contributed economically and
academically to the preparation of this manuscript. My special thanks
go to the remarkable Hitotsubashi Universitys Graduate School of
the Social Sciences in Tokyo for giving me the unique opportunity to
finish the manuscript while serving as a visiting professor. Grants from
the Malm Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare
(MIM) and Malm University College made it possible to become a
visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in
the spring of 2008. At MIM the bookwork benefitted from comments
at seminars and in daily exchanges. The Helsingin Sanomat Research
Foundation and Professor Risto Kunelius provided a unique opportunity to participate in a research project on the global media coverage
of the Muhammad cartoon conflict. Finally, my employer since April
2010, Aalborg University has provided me with an academic home,
where I could finish the manuscript. My special thanks goes to the
great colleagues and friends at CoMID (The Center for the Study of
Migration and Diversity). A huge acknowledgement goes to these
economic contributors and their researchers, who have taken time to
discuss various arguments and findings of the book.
Parts of chapter one and two have been presented at various
stages as guest lectures, public talks, and conference papers on many
occasions, too many to mention. Chapter three is a revised and
expanded version of a paper that was first discussed at the conference
Ethnic Conflicts at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural
Studies and Religion (AHKR), University of Bergen in 2008. Chapter
four is a translated and revised version of an article first published
in Japanese 2010 and originally prepared for an international conference in Malm, Conflict Resolution in the Age of Terrorism: What
role will Europe play? My gratitude to the participants in all of these
events. All errors are of course my sole responsibility.

For direct research assistance I have been fortunate to be able to

work with an outstanding group of younger students. Invaluable help
has come from Zainap Alseraj, Maria Ettrup, Daniel Hervik, Thomas
Hervik, Simon Hervik, Clarissa Berg, and Lise Binderup. I also want
to thank the participants in focus group discussions and individual
discussions for their generous sharing of time, memories, and reflections. Likewise students in Copenhagen, Malm, Chapel Hill,
Aalborg and Tokyo have provided priceless feedback. In addition to
the above mentioned individuals I have benefitted tremendously from
the comments, suggestions and support from Ronald Stade, Carolina
Boe Sanchez, Ulf Hannerz, Elizabeth Eide, Mark Allen Peterson,
Kajsa Olsson, Maja Povrzanovic Frykman, Bjrn Fryklund, Anders
Hellstrm, Ulf Hedetoft, Gavan Titley, Alana Lentin, Jonathan Lewis,
Nakamitsu Izumi, Haci Akman, and the late Marianne Gullestad.
Finally, an endlessly big thanks to my closest family, who are always
provide me with a never-ending intellectual and personal support:
Daniel, Thomas, Simon, and Lisbet.

INTRODUCTION
The Muhammad cartoon crisis refers to the turmoil that arose in
connection to the Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Postens
publication of 12 cartoons on 30 September 2005 as a result of its
testing self-censorship and in response to the Danish Prime Minister,
Anders Fogh Rasmussens rejection on 22 October 2005 of a meeting
with 11 concerned ambassadors about growing anti-Islamic rhetoric
in the Danish public. For most Danes except those directly involved
and the rest of the world, the cartoon crisis is associated with
violent global responses in February 2006 to the anti-Islamic signals
and stories coming out of Denmark. During the first months of 2006
and the news media around the world wrote about Jyllands-Postens
original publication of the cartoons some four months earlier using
sources that had been shaped by polarized, competing discourses in
the news coverage and further colored by the Danish governments
successful spin strategies (Hervik 2008, 2011). In this process much
of the original complexity and nuances were lost in what was increasingly represented as conflict between the Western and the Islamic
world. To mention a few: Jyllands-Postens history of anti-islamic
representations; the governments cultural war of values strategy, and
the inclusion of voices of ordinary Muslims in the media coverage.
This issue of Current Themes in IMER Research will attempt to give
more justice to this complexity by using a research-based platform that
draws from 15 years of research. Only in this larger time perspective
can we properly unfold the simplifying, distorting, politicizing representations and perceptions that prevailed so strongly in the cartoon
affair and continues afterwards in the shape of the22/7 attacks in
Norway on Muslims, young social democrats, feminists and others.
The domestic Danish news coverage from the original cartoon
publications in September 2005 to the coverage of the unfolding
political and violent reactions is permeated by the opinions and values
that characterize the Danish field of journalism (Hjarvard 2006). From
Jyllands-Postens hiring of foreign correspondent Flemming Rose, to
head the newspapers new cultural war of values strategy in 2004
to Roses acceptance of the Freedom of Speech prize by the radical
right populist organization and the establishment of the Free Speech

Society (economically supported by the Jyllands-Posten foundation),

the cartoon affair has been political, politicizing, and polarizing. In the
moral prescriptions of right and wrong, good and bad, few commentators historicized the emergence of anti-Muslim beliefs in the Danish
society, or pointed to the emergence of radical right-wing populism
with its strong idea of cultural incompatibility (Hervik 2011, 2012).
In my analysis of the Danish Muhammad cartoon crisis, I will deal
with the immediate historical circumstances leading up to JyllandsPostens publication of the cartoons and the governments adherence
to non-dialogue, which are crucial in understanding the complexity
of the publication of the cartoons, stories about the cartoons, the
governments negative dialogue strategy, and the stories about the
governments handling of the unfolding cartoon story.
The structure and logic of the news genre rely on a model that insists
on seeing two sides of a conflict, which on one the hand dovetails
nicely with the narrative of clash of civilization (Peterson 2007), and
on the other relies on a domestication of news which resonates with
the readers view of themselves and the Muslim world. In a study
of the Boston Globes coverage of the cartoon conflict Mark Allen
Peterson concluded that readers are invited to see the events following
the publication of the cartoons as a single global event in which
rational Western actors engaged in a rational, democratic practice
are met with a hostile global response by undifferentiated Muslims
whose protests are not seen as forms of democratic expression but as
irrational actions (Peterson 2007).
For the majority of Muslims around the world and many
non-Westerners as well, the underlying causes of anger seem to stem
more from their feelings of Western arrogance and lack of respect. The
cartoons evoked the experience of inferiority and Muslims being the
legitimate target of relentless criticism (Daniels 2007, Eide et al, 2008,
Fischer 2009, Peterson 2007, Shaukat 2006).
The purpose of this book is to fill out some of the voids in the
media coverage and academic treatment of the Danish Muhammad
cartoon affair through the use of research that extends back to the mid
1990s. Most of these publications do not rely on primary scholarly
analysis. Many commentators treat the cartoon story as a single
event that in itself caused the crisis, while Muslims in Denmark are
approached as foreign intruders that illustrates how globalization may
enter and disturb the domestic Danish news scene. In the battle to win
the argument and set the political agenda, the immediate context of
the publication of the cartoons is virtually non-existing in the media
coverage. Here, the driving force of the cartoon crisis is seen as

deriving from the perceived clashing identities between good rational

Westerners and angry, dangerous, bad Muslims.
This book will provide the background, which is necessary
to understand why the cartoons were published including the
evolvement of radical right-wing populism in Denmark (and Sweden)
revolving around an anti-Islamic, anti-non-Westerner, and anticommunist platform. More specifically, I look closer at JyllandsPostens engagement in the moral upsurge called The cultural war of
values (kulturkampen or vrdikamp); representations of Muslims
as terrorists; Muslim voices and perspectives in the media debate;
and the focus on ethnic difference as the cause of conflicts rather
than attitudes towards difference.
The news articles in the Danish press and the first wave of books
about the cartoon story written by journalists and academics, revealed
competing frames of understandings of the cartoon conflict. Although
literally thousands of news articles and several books were written in
Denmark about the cartoon conflict, they reveal serious omissions.
Most chronologies have the publication of the Muhammad cartoons
on 30 September 2005 as the starting point. No Danish news article
or book took up cartoonist Kurt Westergaards earlier drawings that
associate Islam with terrorism, even if some of these were published
only a few weeks prior to the publications of the notorious 12
cartoons on 30 September 2005. Others went as far back as 1997
(Hervik 2011). Jyllands-Postens confrontational anti-Islamic editorials since 2001 were also largely ignored. Very few of the sources have
included Muslim voices beyond a few imams and politicians, primarily
the conservative politician Naser Khader. Foreign journalists and
commentators echoed the distorting Danish sources.
Several books have come out in Denmark on the cartoon crisis.
Academic analysis is scarce in these books, which tend to align
themselves with the opinionated media coverage and public debate.
Klaus and Mikael Rothstein (2006) are two brothers, one scholar and
one journalist, who published the first Danish book on the cartoon
crisis. Their book may be constructively used as a primary source, but
the information given is based on newspaper articles with personal
opinions of the authors, written without the benefit of academic
analysis and broader perspective.
John Hansen and Kim Hundevadt (2006) provided helpful insight
to some of the activities and documents particularly within JyllandsPosten, where they work as journalists. But their book reads more like
a defense of Jyllands-Posten. It is a mile wide but only an inch deep as
it fails to provide substantial analysis that moves beyond the views and

10

discourse of Jyllands-Posten. It is written with economic support by

Jyllands-Posten and published by Jyllands-Postens publisher.
Rune Engelbreth Larsen and Tger Seidenfaden (2006) wrote the
most comprehensive Danish book on the topic. One author is a regular
columnist; the other was editor-in-chief of the large Danish newspaper
Politiken until he passed away in January 2011. Much of the text has
already been published in Politiken. Unlike Hansen and Hundevadt
who are journalists working for the newspaper which published the
target of much international rage, Larsen and Seidenfaden are not
directly involved in the publications of the Muhammad cartoons,
which gives them a broader space for their analysis. Yet, their critical
reaction to Jyllands-Posten is based on a counter discourse that ends
up enforcing the importance of the idea of free speech, which they
argue is not what the conflict is all about.
Anders Jerichow and Mille Rode (2006) have compiled some of the
key documents of the affairs. They do provide some lines of reasoning
and arguments, but there is little analysis and no larger perspective.
Per Bech Thomsen (2006) is a journalist and communications
expert, who wrote a comprehensive book about the Muhammad
cartoon crisis. Besides the fairly detailed representation of the cartoon
story, which reads more like a report than a thorough analysis,
Thomsen interviewed key actors in the Danish scene about their roles.
These actors were already used countless times by the news media and
not much new material is conveyed.
Politician and later Minister of Integration, Birthe Rnn Hornbech
published a small book on liberal values (2006), which includes a
discussion of the Muhammad cartoons prior to February 2006. In this
tendentious piece Hornbech (like Hundevadt and Hansen) is framing
her opponents negatively before presenting their points of view, thus
bearing witness to the opinionated character of the public debate. As
such this genre of writing can best be used as primary material rather
than a direct contribution to the deeper research based analysis of the
cartoon crisis.
Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt discussed multiculturalism in Denmark and included reflections and comments on the
cartoon debate (2008), however, although they are scholars and researchers, they did not conduct primary research on the cartoon crisis for
their book.
Danish Muslims Peter Ali Nicolaisen and Zahid Abdullah
provided a brief bilingual Danish English overview of the cartoon
case (2006). This small book is written in a question and answer
style. It provides some helpful answers to readers that serve mostly as

11

a quick guide into the conflict. This book does not provide analysis
or academic research either.
Mogens S. Mogensen is another consultant who wrote (in English)
a small book to explain the cartoon crisis and the Danish headscarf
debate (2008). Again, the purpose is more to provide some knowledge
to the uninitiated about the conflict, rather than an analysis of the
conflict.
Jerichow and Rodes publication is collection of documents without
academic analysis. In contrast Jytte Klausens recent book (2009) is
truly academic and builds on a number of interviews with key political
and religious leaders. This book has several detailed and interesting
analyses and makes some daring points. The section on Egypt is particularly instructive and intriguing. The author provides some perceptive
moments, such as the Wests push for including disliked opposition
groups in the elections without consulting the Egyptian government
first, and leading to results that the wrong guys may end up winning
the elections as the Hezbollah in Palestine, which the EU then chose
not to accept. The strongest asset, however, is the daring move presentation of then Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fog Rasmussen, as
carrying out Activist Foreign Policy. According to this policy the
Danish militarys primary objective is international operations outside
Natos area and the idea that Denmark should play an active visible
role in international politics.
Klausens book is the only one that more systematically collected
new material, mostly interviews with key actors. Yet it still does not
add much in terms of those shortcomings in the coverage I mentioned
earlier. Unfortunately, the title (The Cartoons that Shook the World) is
misleading since it was not the cartoons but stories about the cartoons
and the governments handling that triggered the cartoon crisis.
Moreover, Klausen - apart from a great, thoroughly researched book
- ends up interviewing only leaders failing to go beyond the top-down
approach. Ordinary Muslims close to the conflict or affected by it are
not included. This omission is serious, because they had experienced
the anti-Islamic sentiments prior to the cartoon publication and they
were forced to relate to the conflict already when the cartoons were
published, whereas most others, including Klausen, entered the crisis
through the violent and global reactions in February 2006.1
Carsten Stages Tegningskrisen (2011) is a PhD turned into a
book. Although much of the complex theoretization is taken out in
this transformation the book is loaded with theoretical concepts and
less experience-near resonance with each set of actors sponsoring the
various positions. Stage takes over the media position that represents

12

the crisis as a single reified event that has a clear beginning that is
the focal point also for foreign eruptions of violence. In the end the
distinction between strategies of debate positions (debatpositionsstrategier) is not discussed in relate to say frames, discourses, and
stories, this book appears mostly as the authors struggle to find his
own vocabulary and present to the readers his opinion about various
critical aspects of the crisis. In this manner, the book appears as a
testing game of historical actions and interpretations but still end up
reproducing the structure and premises of the debate instead of finding
a new separate language and platform for analysis. Such a point of
departure would also have allowed him to introduce the perspective
of ordinary Muslims in his treatment, which was also absernt from the
news media coverage he set out to analyze. Nevertheless and despite
these reservations, I still find that this is one of the more thorough
academic treatments.
The Danish Muhammad Crisis is not written as a single
coherent piece, but consists of four chapters, each with its own
theme, methodology, and analytical apparatus. This format allows
chapters to be read as fairly separate entities and not necessarily in
the order provided here. For the same reason some repetition cannot
be completely avoided.
In the first chapter, I look at the events and processes leading up
to the publication of the 12 cartoons on 30 September 2010. This
includes Jyllands-Postens earlier coverage of Islam, the papers Islam
critical priority as an integral part of a cultural war of values, and
cartoonist Kurt Westergaard earlier work. None of these themes were
taken up in the previous literature or media coverage of the Danish
Muhammad cartoon crisis.
Chapter two enters the cartoon affair from the perspective of
the Danish media coverage in January and February of 2006. As
mentioned above this is also the entry point of most Danish commentators and most Danes. The chapter is based primarily on a frame
analysis of the media coverage, which revealed three competing Danish
frames of understandings Freedom of speech as a Danish freedom;
Freedom of speech as human right threatened by Islamism; and The
demonization of Muslims and political spin is the issue not freedom
of speech. The chapter shows that the nature of these competitors
and the struggle for meaning are seldom revealed to the readers, since
journalists tend to choose just one angle in their coverage or comments.
In chapter three, I focus on the argument that the Danish
Muhammad cartoon crisis constitutes an ethnic conflict, or a conflict
of clashing identities. The first part of the chapter consists of a critical

13

conceptual discussion of ethnic conflict, while the second half looks

closer at what an ethnic conflict perspective can add to our understanding of the cartoon conflict.
In chapter four, I scrutinize the apparent paradox between
the Danish governments adherence to a non-dialogue strategy in
Denmark, while it at the same time and in the midst of the crisis turns
to a high-level group of Christians in order to support and fund their
travel to Egypt to initiate dialogue there. The methodological focus of
my analysis of the delegations visit to Egypt is the response provided
by the Egyptian news media, which covered the visit extensively. In
this analysis the connotations of the concept of dialogue plays a
signficant role.
I include a chronology of events as they occurred historically. This
can of course be misleading when we deal with social memory and
how media consumers remembered the events not chronologically
but through what happened at 4-5 months into the history of the
cartoon crisis.
I end with en epilogue that uses a Finnish newspaper editors
surprise intervention in 2009 on a blog to disassociate her paper from
a certain new controversial cartoon. She did so to avoid any association with the Muhammad Cartoon crisis, which by 2009 had become
a negative association to be avoided, which again helps to explain
the quick disappearance of the topic from the media and from social
memory.

14

CHAPTER 1
THE CARTOON CRISIS AND THE
RE-POLITICALIZATION OF THE DANISH
NEWS MEDIA
The publication of the Muhammad cartoons in Jyllands-Posten 30
September 2005 and the Danish governments refusal to enter into a
real dialogue with foreign and domestic Muslim leaders did not strike
out of the blue. For more than a decade, Denmark has seen a rising
tide of political nationalism accompanied by anti-immigrant rhetoric.
This has been precipitated by significant political and economic
changes, and facilitated by the politicization of Denmarks news
media, including Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten. Yet neither the news
media nor the first wave of publications about the cartoons including
eight Danish books (Hansen & Hundevadt 2006; Hornbech 2006;
Jerichow & Rode 2006; Larsen & Seidenfaden 2006; Mogensen 2008,
Rothstein & Rothstein 2006, Stage 2011, Thomsen 2006) incorporated the immediate historical context such as the Mona Sheikh
story of 2001, to which cartoonist Kurt Westergaard (who drew the
famous bomb-and-the-creed-in-the-turban cartoon) contributed with
another Muslim-as-terrorist drawing, and Jyllands-Postens record of
anti-Muslim discourse predating the Muhammad cartoon story. The
cartoon story must be placed in a proper context, if we are to better
understand the conditions and circumstances that led up to the publication of the cartoons and led to more violence, carelessness, and
political activism after the publications.
This chapter treats Danish socio-cultural history, the Mona Sheikh
story, and Jyllands-Postens recent history of anti-Islamism in the
years prior to 30 September 2005. The rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric
in historically tolerant Denmark is particularly puzzling in the light
of the small numbers involved. The number of Muslims in Denmark
is estimated to be about 200.000 out of a population of 5.5 million.
Of those, only 25.000-30.000 is practicing believers, regularly
praying, attending Mosque and seeing a confessional imam. Muslims
in Denmark represent more than 50 different countries of origin with

15

Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and

Afghanistan being the largest, each with more than 10.000 Muslims
(Jacobsen 2007). Approximately 2.500 native Danes have converted
to Islam (Jensen and stergaard 2007). How, then, can we explain
the rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric, often expressed as fear that Danish
culture will be swamped by Islamic ideologies? This chapter links antiMuslim, anti-immigrant rhetoric to the socio-cultural and politicaleconomic challenges to Denmark in the wake of globalization and
Europeanization, arguing that anti-Islamic discourses are idioms
through which new Danish nationalism is asserted and articulated.
Arjun Appadurai has recently warned against the danger of the
idea of the modern nation-state in what he calls the period of high
globalization and large-scale violence (2006). The road is relatively
direct, he says from national genius to a totalized cosmology of the
sacred nation, and further to ethnic purity and cleansing (2006:4).
The danger of nationalism comes with a second idea, the idea of
social uncertainty, or ontological insecurity (Giddens 1991, Laing
1968[1959]), which he contends can drive ethnic cleansing and other
predatory endeavors. Uncertainty can arise when agents successfully
set the media debate through issues such as: How many persons of
this or that sort really exist in a given territory? Or, in the context of
rapid migration or refugee movement, how many of them are there
now among us? (Appadurai 2006:5). Nationalism can perhaps
best be done through constructing an excluded other (Gingrich and
Banks 2006, Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002, Hervik 2006, Miles
1993) with (neo)nationalism and (neo)racism intimately linked as
categories of exclusion particularly in already established nationstates. Appadurai argues that majoritarian identities are created
through national policy and public debate, which pursues the utopian
goal of establishing the purity of the national whole. Regardless of
how small the number of minorities, they remind the majority of its
incompleteness. A focal point of analysis is the historical moment
when social identities turn into predatory identities, which may
occur when people begin to see themselves as a threatened majority
with the inherent potential of becoming a minority in its own
country. Appadurai uses the Holocaust as one of his examples of
what a shift to predatory identities can lead to. From this historical
example it may seem that the concept of predatory is too valueladen when applied to contemporary Denmark, but the analytical
issue is to identify the predatory character of policy, opinion, and
everyday talk in its earliest stages. As such the idea of the predatory
captures the showing of a disposition to injure or exploit others for

16

personal gain or profit often phrased as a just act of self-defense to

silence, neutralize, or expel an enemy.
The anxiety of incompleteness about Denmarks sovereignty and
its perceived threat posed by a small number of newcomers, epitomized by the fear of terrorist acts committed by Muslims of diverse
background living in Denmark, are important for understanding the
Danish government policies and Jyllands-Postens publication of the
Muhammad cartoons.
Jyllands-Posten was criticized by another government-friendly
newspaper Berlingske Tidende for the publication of the 12 cartoons,
which it saw as an unnecessary irresponsible provocation. In the
next section I will turn to the 19th century to clarify the depth of the
alleged anti-authoritarian character of the Danish people and the
governing, cultivating urban elite, which was played out in competing
Danish news frames during the cartoon crisis (Hervik and Berg 2007).

Denmark becomes unified

The historical emergence of Danish nationalism coincided with the
loss of a multilingual, multicultural empire. The Danish constitution (Grundloven) was passed in 1849, institutionalizing the end of
absolute monarchical rule. A few years later in 1864, when Denmark
was defeated in a war with Germany, the Danish empire had lost
Norway, Sleswig, Holsten and Lauenborg. For the first time, (almost)
only Danish speakers lived within the borders, while leaving a group
of 170.000 Danish speakers right outside its territory. In 1920 most
of these Danish speakers became Danes when the lost territory in
southern Jutland, located on the German side of the border, was voted
back in a referendum. This referendum came as part of the negotiations of borders following Germanys defeat in World War I, and ended
up moving the national border further south, reflecting the linguistic
border as close as possible.
During the last third of the nineteenth century nation building
efforts spread from the elite to the peasants, workers, and smallholders. This shift in balance of power was the outcome of shifting
success of three competing political programmes that are crucial for
understanding competing political forces in Denmark even today
(Linde-Laursen 2007). The elitist-oriented National Liberals promoted
a political type of nationalism that believed in a popular sovereignty
based on citizens who were deemed cultured and educated enough
to exercise democratic rights (Hansen 2002:57). Hansen notes that
National Liberals did not hold any romantic visions about of an
authentic peasantry, but maintained a general discontent for everything

17

that took place outside of Copenhagen. In their view the Danish state
did not need to be limited to the Danish nation but can be extended
(ibid.57-58).
A second line of thinking emerged from the work of Nikolai
Frederik Severin Grundtvig,2 which resembled Herders idea of the
Kulturnation and sought to put the people and their rights to selfdetermination at the core of its nationalism. Accordingly, a linguistic
criterion was the proper division in southern Jutland separating
Danish and German speakers (ibid.: 58-59). To counter the National
Liberals grip on power through education, Grundtvig sought to give
peasants without education a chance to exchange ideas and organize
themselves politically. During the winter peasants would come to folk
high schools, whose informal settings and absence of rigid teaching
methods appealed to the Danish populace through a strong sense of
community, public speakers, singing, dancing, gymnastics, and so
on. By its emphasis on the the living word there would be entertaining yet instructive exchanges, further contributing to educating
the peasants, building a national consciousness, and training them for
political office.
A third line of political thought had journalist and politician Viggo
Hrup as its spokesperson. The people of this persuasion championed
an anti-power politics. Denmark should pursue a pragmatic friendship
with Germany in order to gain the most influence, and should even
be willing to settle for a state smaller than the linguistic boundaries
(ibid.).
The Danish popular movement of peasants and workers created
a separate public sphere and a civic society independent of the state,
which came out of the nations failure to establish norms for all citizens
(Linde-Laursen 2007). Danish nationalists at the time were motivated
by the hostile relationship to Germany and using it within the country
for gaining social and political power.
To more fully capture the peculiar Danish popular relation to the
state it is helpful to contrast it with the strikingly different historical
situation in neighboring Sweden. In Sweden the government reacted in
a more balanced manner, (for the Swedish approach to the Muhammad
cartoon crisis (see Wallentin and Ekecrantz 2007), which could be seen
most clearly in the second crisis around artist Lars Vilks provocative
drawing of a roundabout dog with the head of the prophet Muhammed.
During the Vilks controversy, when the Swedish government was
quick to enter a dialogue with Muslim leaders and distance itself from
the drawing.3 In 19 and 20th century Sweden Social Democrats pursued
nation building through a modernist utopian ideal by uniting popular

18

movement with an alliance of peasants and workers with the state4. In

the origin myth of the Swedish nationalism, the free Swedish yeoman
peasant and the King build an intimate alliance fighting against foreign
powers and domestic nobility. Eventually the success of the alliance
grew into a strong idea: the state and the people were joined in a
common endeavour to safeguard the two freedoms, that of the nation
and that of the individual (Trgrdh 2002:133-134). The Swedish
state and people are inseparable embedding an alliance of the friendly,
strong, egalitarian state to whom enlightened autonomous people
willingly give up individual liberty and free choice (ibid.:142-143). The
Danish tension between the responsible, educated, cultivate elite of
the capital and the Grundtvigian view of the superior position of the
people (Folket), whether it is comprised of peasants or the workers
(but not both at the same time), is indeed present in the debate about
the use of free speech in the Muhammad cartoon coverage. Thus, the
rhus based Jyllands-Posten was scolded for its uneducated use of
free speech by competing government-friendly Berlingske Tidende in
Copenhagen.

(Re)Politicizing the media

The critique of Jyllands-Posten by Berlingske Tidende reflects not only
the continuance of 19th century nationalist narratives in contemporary
political debate but also what Danish media historian Stig Hjarvard
has called the re-politicization of Danish media in the late 1990s
and 2000s.
When newspapers were established more than 200 years ago,
they were closely tied to political parties. The political party system
developed in the 1870s along with newspapers Berlingske Tidende
(1789), Politiken (1884), and Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten (1871).
The tabloid press came shortly after the turn of the century. Ekstra
Bladet (1904) and B.T. (1915).5 Berlingske Tidende was the organ
of the Right (Hjre, from 1915 The Conservative Peoples
Party (Det Konservative Folkeparti). Politiken (founded by Viggo
Hrup) was tied to The Social Liberals (Det Radikale Venstre) with
an image as a paper for intellectuals. Jyllands-Posten was tied to The
Conservatives, with a readership of independent business owners and
white-collar workers. The Social-Demokraten (1872) belonged to the
Social Democratic Party, but does not exist anymore.
Under economic pressure and the introduction of new technologies
in the early 20th century the opinions of newspapers were no longer
an asset. Papers began loosing their role as agitators. Some went out
of business, while other papers adjusted and merged as de-politicized

19

local media monopolies that served a town or region. According to

Hjarvard the print media began to operate as a public service model
with media institutions being independent of politics and guided
by journalistic criteria. Most declared themselves independent of
particular party interest. News replaced views (Hjarvard 2006:48).
Jyllands-Posten continued its expansion from Eastern Jutland to
Jutland and by the 1930s to include the island of Fyn. In connection
to this last expansion it declared itself an independent civil (or
bourgeoisie) (in Danish: uafhngig borgerlig) paper, still with strong
opinions articulated agai nst the domination of news from Copenhagen
(kbenhavneri), the intervention of state, and economic liberalism
(Jensen 2000:33). In 1969 the name was changed to Morgenavisen
Jyllands-Posten, when it became a truly national newspaper that
included Copenhagen. The daily circulation is around 150.000 with
6-700.000 daily readers (2007). Jyllands-Posten presents itself as
an independent liberal newspaper it but has historically cultivated
close ties to the leading party of the government The Liberal Party
(Venstre).6 Today, Politiken, Denmarks second largest newspaper
opposes the present government and, as such, is closer to The Social
Democratic Party (Socialdemokratiet) and The Social Liberals (Det
Radikale Venstre) with a leaning towards the later. Its circulation is
134.000 copies. The third largest paper is Berlingske Tidende, which
is a conservative government friendly newspaper that officially pursues
an unbiased position towards the government. Its circulation is
124,550.
Ekstra Bladet is the larger of two tabloid papers in Denmark,
known for its provocative, aggressive, sensationalist journalistic
research. Its daily circulation is 110.880. The second tabloid paper
B.T., has a circulation of 93.942 and sees itself as a popular family
newspaper. Both of the tabloids were strong supporters of both
Jyllands-Posten and the government and against the Muslims during
the Muhammad cartoon crisis.
Hjarvard explains that to understand the contemporary re-politization on newspapers one must not only look at the development
of Danish politics, but also the major changes in the commercial
conditions for Danish news production. The re-politicization of the
press during the last decade can be explained by increased economic
pressure due to the rapid expansion of the electronic news media,
a general decline in advertisement, and changes in competition
for that advertising. Before the re-politicizing of the news media,
newspapers had resembled each other in the mid 1990s, when they
competed mostly on traditional journalistic criteria. In 2001 two free

20

newspapers, MetroExpress and Urban made their debut. By 2006 free

dailies captured close to 60 % of the market. The free newspapers
sought to reach a general audience with short fact-based news stories
and consumer information financed by advertisement. In response to
this challenge, the largest established newspapers emphasized values
and opinions as a way to sell their papers. Offering an opinion in
the editorials, on the front page, and in the editing of opinion pieces,
leading newspapers came to echo the political parties, even if nuances
and variation could be found in all papers (Hjarvard 2006). The
newspapers have become political actors who try to make a difference
in politics by taken clear stances on popular issues. On such issue is
the presence of immigrants and refugees, which has attracted strong
opinions and evoked nationalist rhetoric.7
Both the de-politicization of news media in the early 20th century
and its re-politicizing at the close of the century came in response to
commercial pressures, including falling circulation of newspapers. This
is particularly clear in the case of the tabloid papers Ekstra Bladet and
B.T. that would lead to the Ekstra Bladets unprecedented and highly
politicized campaign against foreigners and immigration policies
in 1997. Its campaign was intimately tied to the upcoming Danish
Peoples Party who in Ekstra Bladet had a formidable dance partner
(Hervik 1999; 2006; 2011).
Jyllands-Postens confrontational and Islam critical style emerges at
least as far back as 1997.

Amin - Jyllands-Postens Story

In early April 1997, during tabloid newspaper Ekstra Bladets
infamous campaign The Foreigners (Hervik 1999), Jyllands-Posten
published a story about a ten-year-old Danish Muslim boy named
Amin. For newspapers, a good story about immigrants must fit
into the thematic category immigrants as a problem (Hussain,
Ferruz, OConnor 1997). Amins story is one such story that appeared
in Jyllands-Posten. According to Signe Toft (1999), this was the
biggest and most comprehensive story covered by this newspaper in
the beginning of 1997. From the very beginning Jyllands-Postens
leadership invested editorial space in the story, which underscores the
importance assigned to it.8
Amin was expelled from a private school in Frederikssund because
he refused to bathe with his peers. The story ran for three weeks,
with daily articles and letters to the editors. The first headlines were
School Accused of Racism (2 April 1997) and Talk Solves Bathing
Problems (Jyllands-Posten 3 April 1997), and some of the articles

21

could be seen as an attempt to solve the situation in a practical manner.

On the storys second day, Jyllands-Posten published an editorial titled
The Magic Word. Its author was upset that the school authorities
had been accused of racism, which would preclude any further reasonable argument. According to the editorial, the boys shyness, rather
than his religion, was his reason for not wanting to bathe naked.
Therefore, his expulsion from school was reasonable (Editorial,
Jyllands-Posten 3 April 1997). In other words, he was expelled for
being shy.
In the following days, the newspaper published articles and letters
to the editor that responded positively to this editorial. The focus
changed into an issue about the harm an unwashed body could do
to Danish swimming pools. The water in the pools came to serve as a
metaphor of Danishness; the unwashed body would infect the water as
foreignness would infect Danish cultural values (Toft 1999).
Amins story reflects the problems of foreign culture in the midst
of Danishness. The dominant elements in all of the related articles
are the rules for bathing, the hygienic of Danish pools, and the
obligation of Muslims to adapt to Danish culture of bathing. Authors
of letters to the editor were provoked by Amins insistence on being
different in the midst of Danish celebrations of casual nude bathing.
There were seventeen such letters to the editor, and not a single one
would take Amins Islamic beliefs into consideration. According to
Jyllands-Postens letters editor, these were selected because they were
representative.
Jyllands-Posten intervened in the news story by using its editorial
space to point out what it saw as the essentials of the story; the
editorial appealed to shared Danish understandings of the problems
associated with cultural diversity and argued that accusations of
racism were an insult. The editorial referred to Amin and his family
as lacking any sense of social refinement. By the same token, JyllandsPosten denied that Amin was expelled for racist reasons. Yet, the
denial of racism may be a significant part of neoracism (Hervik 2004).
Racism is an emotionally and politically charged concept; neoracism
has a more subtle contestation of cultural difference, one in which
culture rather than race is the basis of judgments of moral, social,
and intellectual inferiority. In Amins case, his not wishing to wash
himself, or not being permitted to wash himself in his own way, is
the problem, and it becomes a sign of his not wanting to integrate.
This focus on Danish bathing culture and the potential danger of
allowing unwashed Muslim behinds to infect Danish bathing water
becomes a practical symbol of the gap between Danish and foreign

22

culturethe idea and fear that our culture is in danger of being run
over, and so on. Simple practical solutions could have been reached,
as they are at many schools: Amin could arrive ten minutes before his
peers, or the school could put up a small bathing cabin. But by the
time Jyllands-Posten had finished covering the story, it was too late.
Amin had already become an icon, a symbol of an unwanted presence
that can be discussed as a problem of hygiene rather than as an issue of
racism (Toft 1999). Maintaining his difference got Amin expelled from
the school.
A few years later and a few months before 9/11 Jyllands-Posten
engaged itself strongly in a story that I named after main object of
contestation, Mona Sheikh.

The Mona Sheikh story of 2001 and Jyllands-Postens editorials

A huge story by domestic standards broke on 17 May 2001 with the
evening news broadcast of TV-avisen, the Danish national television
(TV-avisen 19 May 2001). Three young Muslims, Mona Sheikh,
Tanwir Ahmed and Babar Baig, who were born in Denmark of
Pakistani parents, were running for political office as members of the
small Social Liberal Party (Det Radikale Venstre). One of them, Mona
Sheikh, was seeking the partys nomination as a candidate for the parliamentary election. The three Danish Muslims were framed as being
planted in and infiltrating the Social Liberals. By virtue of their
membership in subunits of the Pakistan-based but globally extensive
Minhaj-ul-Quran 9 movement, they were accused of supporting the
death penalty, the Taliban regime, the Iranian regime of late Ayatollah
Khomeini, and simply being fundamentalists. A set of articles two
days later in Berlingske Tidende gave the accusations a further boost,
when two journalists interpreted an interview with Mona Sheikh
as supporting the death penalty, when in fact she said the opposite
(Madsen and Termansen 19 May 2001).
The partys spokesperson on the Mona Sheikh story, Johannes
Lebech, reacted to the national television news portrayal of candidates
as Islamic fundamentalists by telling the media that the Social Liberal
Party could not accept such values. Accordingly, a few days into the
story TV-avisen could tell the viewers that one candidate seeking
nomination for a seat in Folketinget, Mona Sheikh, would, all things
considered, not be elected as the partys top candidate for this seat
(TV-avisen 19 May 2001). Rather than engaging in dialogue with the
candidates themselves, the party officials went to the media to make
the three Muslims alleged fundamentalist connections and aspirations
known to a broad audience and at the same time show that the party

23

was acting to control their power. In this manner the Social Liberal
Party representatives denied Muslims access to the crucial nomination
to the upper echelons of the political system, Folketinget, on the basis
of their stigmatization as supporters of the death penalty, fundamentalists, and distrustful (Hervik 2002).
In the weeks following 17 May hundreds of articles and opinionpieces filled the newspapers. Jyllands-Posten published more editorials and more anti-Islamic articles than any other Danish newspaper
(Hervik 2002, Hervik 2011), which in light of the Muhammad cartoon
conflict reveal significant resemblances in its crass language and its
characterization of Islam. Here are two examples.
In Islams dirty face (Islams beskidte ansigt, 22 May) JyllandsPostens editors treats the claim that the Taliban wished to mark (or
brand) all Hindus. The Taliban is described as engaged in a practice
of human degrading, expressing an approach to human life that
can hardly be distinguished from that of Germanys Nazis, the most
despicable in the world, and who represent a spiritual darkening
of such abomination that the regime has become an international
pariah - only officially recognized by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates, and Pakistan. Only military invention could change things,
the editorial claimed, but who would offer a drop of blood on this
land of no value?10
To bring this story home to his Danish readers, and to make a
political point, the author builds a series of links with Pakistan. He
emphasizes that this country gives weapon to the Taliban, but also
indirectly via the organization Minhaj-ul-Quran moral support to
the extreme suppression that the Taliban is using against the Afghani
people.11 By linking Pakistan to the Taliban, and Minhaj to Pakistan,
the editorial suggests that the three young Danish Muslim politicians
of Pakistani parentage are the same kind of bad people. In this
process the internally suspicious minorities are consubstantiate with
the imagined globally threatening terrorists. The national rhetoric of
contestation draws on global threats to enhance the seriousness and
the danger of having the domestic space polluted with foreign contamination. In the end the politicized media has given a hand to the
predatory effort to fend off the three Muslim Danes chance to run
for political office.
The Danish Press Council ruled six months later that TV-Avisen
had to retract this connection between Minhaj and the Taliban, since
there was no journalistic validity to the claim. TV-avisen did this12,
but Jyllands-Posten did not cover the retraction or apologize for
its own use of this unsupported link. Taliban is a powerful tool for

24

Jyllands-Posten as showing the world the dirtiest side of the dirty

face of Islam. Although the Taliban regime was not recognized by
the governments of most Muslim majority nations, and although its
theology has been widely criticized within the Muslim intellectual
tradition (Olesen 1998, 2001), In its editorials Jyllands-Postens
imposed upon the reader a series of connections that equate the fundamentalists of the Taliban with the three Muslims in Denmark, which is
an out-of-proportion fear of a small number of Muslims, who would
threaten the integrity of Danish society and values.
The second example is Forces of darkness (Mrkets krfter),
which came five days later on 27 May. Without revealing her
name, this editorial appropriated and domesticated a point of view
presented by Helle Brix on the previous day in Politiken. Brix,
who worked for a subgroup within the Social Liberals looking for
evidence against the young Muslims activities (Svane 2001, Eskholm
2001),13 had asked why feminists do not get involved in fighting the
suppressive values of Muslim men. In its editorial, Jyllands-Posten
calls on Danish feminists to:
Why dont they protest against foreigners, who come to our country to
argue noisily and self-righteously that women should wear the headscarf and
preferably be mummified behind a veil, that girls should be circumcised, and
young women should be married in forced marriage to unknown cousins in
foreign countries, and that women in all aspects are inferior to the men? ()
Why dont they stand up and let their voices be heard, when representatives
of foreign cultures readily pronounce young mens unlimited right to sexual
intercourse with women, while the women should be virgins at the night of
the wedding, knowing that such an argumentation can only make sense, when
you feel entitled to distinguish between women and whores? (27 May 2001).14

At first there is no direct mention of who these representatives of

foreign cultures are, just that they are despicable and seek to
intimidate Danes with arguments described as noisy and self-righteous.
Later, this enemy image of people with indulgent norms and practices
is labelled a fundamentalist Muslim group and finally named:
Mona Sheikh, Tanwir Ahmed, and Babar Baig. They are described as
being aggressive and unknowingly do Danish culture a big favour by
appearing too self-justified, so darkened, and so aggressive, that they
evoke an open discussion about the values this country has achieved
in the centuries after the Reformation. Thus, in the end the editorial
has turned an attack on a set of particularly abhorrent practices into a
direct character attack on three Danish born, Danish educated young
politicians because they practice Islam.

25

In these two editorials as well as in many others on 2001, Muslims

are not only essentialized as the same category of people, whether
Taliban or members of the Social Liberal Party in Denmark, but
the category is also rhetorically placed in a different phase of development. The loaded vocabulary applied by Jyllands-Posten to capture
the activities and ideologies of Islam and Muslims shows both antagonistic categories and an enemy image. Some of the most frequently
applied words in Jyllands-Postens editorials, and articles about Islam
are abomination (vederstyggelig), darkening (formrkelse) and
Middle Age-like (middelalderlig). Taliban represents a spiritual
darkening of such abomination (24 May). The young Muslim
fundamentalists are said to speak from the platform of Middle Age
religious value norms, and the Danes in all their obvious naivety
let darkened forces work freely on introducing Middle Age conditions in this country (27 May). Middle Aged conditions are used
several times in this editorial. The Muslim resistance against the Big
Bang theory is ominous talk that evokes the thought of obscurantism
(ndsformrkelse) and dark Middle age (15 August). Muslims
let themselves be represented in Denmark by active debaters, who
demand basic changes, so that Denmark is adjusted to Muslim groups,
who wish Middle Age-like, close to Afghani conditions, even though
Islam is not necessarily synonymous with reactionary and Middle
Age darkening (17 August). In Denmark we have made it beyond
the Middle Age phase and the accompanying scientific- and legal
mentality15 (13 September). In Dirty face of Islam 22 May the
editorial describes the unnamed three Muslims in Denmark as wanting
near Afghani conditions, since they allegedly support the Taliban.
Thus, the editorial describes their presence in the Social Liberal Party,
as people whose values belong in the Middle age, but not have come
to Denmark. Again and again, the editorial places the three domestic
Muslims outside of the Danish society and in a dark distant past.
One of the consequences of representing Muslim minorities as
belonging to the past (to a different phase of development) is that
dialogue is not possible. Modern Danish values merge as being relaxed,
open-minded, common sense, rational, and extroverted, while Muslims
are evil, middle age, wishing Afghani conditions, have no will to be
integrated, have learned from home the words demands, rights
and social welfare, and generally leave no room for the Danish values.
Their differences are represented in the editorials as incompatible with
Danish values.16 In other words, Muslims are inferiorized, Denmark
and the Danish society is placed on a higher level of development in
Jyllands-Postens socio-evolutionary and ethnocentric scheme.

26

Much later in October 2005 - 11 ambassadors send a letter to

the Danish Prime Minister requesting a meeting. This letter included
a statement 25 September 2005 by Minister for Culture Brian
Mikkelsen. Mikkelsen had explained contemporary Muslim culture
is evolving in Denmark with Middle age norms and anti-democratic
ways of thinking. (Mikkelsen in Larsen and Seidenfaden 2006:18).
Thus, the rhetoric and the socio-evolutionary idea it builds upon is not
new to the cartoon crisis but extends back to 2001 at least.
Mikkelsen continued his statement just quoted by saying that
this is the new front of the culture war (Mikkelsen in Larsen and
Seidenfaden 2006:18). The idea and practice of cultural war against
domestic political enemies on their soft immigration policy is part
of the context that is important for understanding Jyllands-Postens
publication of the 12 cartoons. The publication is an integral part of
the morality based cultural war of values.

Cultural war of values

Shortly after winning the parliamentary election in November 2001, the
Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen launched a political
strategy which was afterwards coined culture war (kulturkamp), or
debate of cultural values of the Danish society. The culture war started
in a New Year speech on 1 January 2002, when Rasmussen attacked
elite judges of taste (smagsdommere) and soon followed by closing
a number of committees and boards accused of elitism, but it wasnt
until January a year later that he more fully elaborated on the ideology
of cultural wars.
It is actually my opinion that setting the agenda in the debate of values
changes society much more than those changes of the law. When I speak
broadly about culture: It is the outcome of the culture war that decides
Denmarks future. Not the economic policies. Not the technocratic changes
of the judicial system. What is decisive is who has the fortune of setting the
agenda in the debate of values. (Hardis and Mortensen 2003).

Undoubtedly inspired by the culture wars that gained strength in the

US in the 1990s, Rasmussens government attacked the values of its
opposition, the 1968 generation, the elite judges of the state, and the
politically correct, instead insisting on a long overdue uncompromising celebration of Danish values (Lykkeberg 2008). As implied
in Rasmussens statement, these values were expressed in policy, such
as zero-tolerance towards the unemployed, who were penalized for not
trying hard enough applying for jobs. Ensuing discussions about what
values the Danish society should rest upon were intimately linked to an

27

anti-immigrant statements and policies generally regarded as already

among the most restrictive in Europe.
Jyllands-Posten joined the culture war strategy in the summer of
2003. With the new emphasis on values and culture war JyllandsPosten decided to widen the concept of culture from high culture to
include habits, ways of thinking and life ways and to debate culture
(Elkjr and Bertelsen 2006b). Journalistic chief-editor Jrn Mikkelsen
was turned on by culture war stories based on the focal points of the
governments culture war: Denmarks Radio (Public service station),
Islam, and ex-communists (ibid.).
To carry out the shift from traditional coverage of high culture
into value-based cultural journalism, Jyllands-Posten brought home its
correspondent in Moscow, Flemming Rose, in April 2004 to serve as
cultural editor. Under his leadership, Islam received more articulated
critical attention than it had during the Mona Sheikh story of 2001,
and regardless of the fact that Rose had already written powerful
editorials as part of the culture war against left-wingers.17 Roses
promotion was a further shift to the right, noted in an internal survey
made by Jyllands-Posten in 2004. One hundred employees out of
167 answered the question: Do you feel that Jyllands-Posten has
become more rightwing in its way of prioritizing journalistic stories?
Eighty-one percent answered in the affirmative. According to Bent
Jensen, a member of the Board of the Jyllands-Posten Foundation,
Jyllands-Posten sharper profile on Islam and support of private
property rights explains this perception (Elkjr and Bertelsen 2006a).
Facing increased competition from free dailies, Politiken and
Jyllands-Posten merged into a single media corporation, with two
holding companies on equal footing. The activities of JP/Politikens Hus
include the publication of the large morning papers Jyllands-Posten
and Politiken, tabloid Ekstra-Bladet, and the free daily 24timer
(24 hours). The two papers ended up separating the market between
them and each pursuing their own political interests. Politiken took
the green segment of the market, consisting of the Social Liberals
and Social Democrats and focusing more on the eastern part of
Denmark. Jyllands-Posten covered the blue segment, supporting the
ruling Danish Peoples Party and focusing primarily on the western
part of the country. Thus, Jyllands-Posten supported the governments
proposal to send troops into Iraq, while Politiken furiously opposed
it. A study of the front page and editorial of Politiken and JyllandsPosten during the Muhammad cartoon crisis confirmed this division.
From 5 to 28 February 2005 Politiken carried 12 leading front page
stories and 19 editorials critical of the governments handling of the
crisis, while Jyllands-Posten brought only 1 front-page story and no
editorials (Barfod 2006). In the end, the administrative collaboration
28

has solidified the polarization between government-supporting and

government-critical papers (Hjarvard 2006).
Even though fear of immigrants in Denmark and uncontrolled
immigration was registered in the wake of Ekstra Bladets campaign in
1997 (Hervik 1999, 2011), the securitization of Muslim culture came
out explicitly in Jyllands-Posten in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Incompatible cultural differences

In September 2005 senior journalist Orla Borg warned that publication
of the cartoons, particularly the Kurt Westergaards cartoon (Muslim
man with the bomb and the Muslim credo in the turban cartoon) was
too controversial and offensive for many Muslim families that he knew
(Hansen and Hundevadt 2006). Yet Borgs own articles in JyllandsPosten helped establish the context that encouraged Rose to sponsor
the cartoons by articulating growing majoritarian warnings about the
threat of small numbers and the need to take action.
Years earlier Jyllands-Posten had published a major article by
Borg, in which he presented as one of the most important stories since
Denmark entered the EEC (later EU). Borg wrote: In a few decades
Danes will cease to be a uniform population with roots in the same
religion, culture, language, tradition and value norms (Borg 1999).
The quote echoes the words of the main academic source in the story,
demographer, P.C. Matthiessen, whose rhetoric evokes images of
Ekstra Bladets anti-immigrant campaign of 1997 (Gade 1997)
I dont think that the Danes have been told the truth. The contemporary
immigration is without historical precedence [...] Many Danes are not aware
about this historically unique situation. They have been reading that we
have taken in immigrants earlier. But this is a new situation because of the
number, and because there is a cultural and religious difference. And that is
not something that will go away. (Matthiessen in Borg 1999).

On the same day an editorial in Jyllands-Posten endorsed Matthiessens

concern and warnings.
[A] growing number of people will have a widely different other culture and
religion, which will be difficult to assimilate unlike the group of people, the
country has received over time. [...] This summer we have only scratched
the surface and as a warning about conflicts of coming years, experience the
so-called headscarf case and the discussion about halal-meat in schools and
institutions for children. No politician has however seriously paid attention to
these cases as symptoms of an underlying, almost silent revolution; The Danish
society is already changing its character vitally (Editorial 29 August 1999).

29

Differences such as in wearing a headscarf and eating halal-food are

seen as in themselves causing conflict. This logic assumes that cultural
difference generates conflict. Those who wear the headscarf and
ask for halal-food create problems for themselves and risk evoking
negative feelings among their Danish hosts. They are unruly guests,
thereby creating their own problems including racism (Hervik 2004).
Racism in this construction is a result of the immigrants insistence on
being culturally different and being different is seen as incompatible
with modern Danish cultural values.
According to Matthiessen and Jyllands-Postens editorial the
solution for the majority to cope with the (imagined) threat of increasing numbers of culturally different people is to strengthen Danish
values. Jyllands-Posten assures readers that such an enforcement
of Danish values cannot be racist since it is simply a question of
maintaining sovereignty: No one becomes a racist by demanding and
enforcing development within his own house (29 August 1999). To
carry forward this project, Jyllands-Posten and Matthiessen called
for a think tank that could think through the consequences of this
evolving danger of encroaching cultural and religious differences. A
few months later, on 2 November 2000, Minister of the Interior Karen
Jespersen announced that Matthiessen was one of the members of a
new of a think tank that would look at the future development in the
number of foreigners in Denmark and describe the social consequences
of this.18
In the summer of 2001, Jyllands-Posten published another major
article by Borg, called The New Denmark, which reinvigorates the
fear of small numbers as outlined by Appadurai and the perception of
the incompatibility of the culturally different migrants. The arrival of
historically new migrants (read: Muslims) negatively transforms the
development and composition of the Danish people. Similarly, the 2001
article has a veiled Muslim woman in the middle of a graphic illustration, which shows which culture and people that are to be feared.
Racialization of this cultural difference is overt in Borgs summary of
the new prognosis: That mousy hair and blue eyes does not necessarily
signal that you are standing in front of the average Dane. It could as
well be black hair and brown eyes (Borg 2001). The article ends with
a quote by historian: Immigration will change the Danish national
identity. Immigration is of a different kind than earlier immigration,
since many people arrive with a different culture and religion (ibid.).
The following day, Jyllands-Posten asked a number of politicians
to comment on Borgs article. Spokesperson on legal issues, Birthe
Rnn Hornbech (The Liberal Party), who would in 2007 become
Minister of Integration said, If this tendency goes on, our country
30

will be battered (Langager 2001). Hornbech was speaking about the

prognosis showing an increase of refugees; asylum seekers from the
Third World thus become a threat to Danish national identity. Political
spokesman Lene Espersen (The Conservative Peoples Party), who in
2001 became Minister of Justice, emphasized the power of national
values to overcome difference: We must hold on to Denmark as a
nation-state and those values that bond us together. Can we do that
then it doesnt matter, if people have a different ethnic background.
They only need to understand the Danish culture, language and
religion (ibid.). Thus, a strengthening of Danish values is the answer
to what could dissolve the anxiety over small numbers. A third
politician responding to Borgs article was political spokesperson, Jytte
Andersen (Social Democratic Party). For her it is not the number but
the outline of an enemy image that surfaces: No Islamic teaching
shall decide, what Denmark is going to look like (ibid.).
None of the these politicians questioned the premises leading to the
new numbers, but reached readily for a nationalistic rhetoric in which
Danes need to hold on to our values in order to defend themselves
against being battered, by minority rule in Denmark.
A central premise of the statistics on threatening numbers is once
ethnic, always ethnic; the argument assumes not only that immigrant
values are all the same, but that they do not change over length of
residence, and that Danish-born children of immigrants continue to
have these monolithic alien values (Espersen 2001; lgaard 2001).
Accordingly, the number of cultural others can only increase in the
future, unless of course, these others leave the country.
Shortly before the publication of the Muhammed cartoons,
Jyllands-Posten published a series of articles and editorials that explicitly linked the dangers of immigration with Muslims and Islam. On
11 September 2005, 4 years after the suicide attacks on World Trade
Centre and Pentagon, a time marker noted all over the Danish press,
Jyllands-Postens published a new front page story by Borg: Islam the
most belligerent [Religion]. The subheading goes: A Danish linguist
has during three years analyzed 10 religions basic texts and concludes
that the texts of Islam encourage terrorism and violence more than in
other religions (Borg 2005).
The story is based on a PhD dissertation by Tine Magaard, whom
the journalist explains has a recent approved dissertation at Sorbonne
University in Paris. Borg ignored the historical foundation of Magaards
research, which doesnt automatically apply to contemporary Islam.
Magaard had for instance looked in the Quran and counted words
referring to violence and compared the result with other sacred texts.

31

For the story he also got statements by imams in Denmark, rather than
by experts in the ancient text analyzed by Magaard.19 As a result, the
story explicitly ties contemporary Islam to violence.
Two days later Jyllands-Postens editorial officially supported
Magaards findings and Borgs story, tying the issues they raise to
fundamentalism, and to the danger of cultural others to urban Western
life:
Today the fundamentalists have gained influence. They have acted in the
shadow of the wish for new Arab greatness, and they have succeeded in
demonizing the Western world. Fundamentalists must at any cost be isolated
and fought down. Here and elsewhere. Their opinions are only making the
problems worse, and they are the architects behind the parallel communities,
which besets Western cities [] The Quran must also be discussed. It has
been so earlier, and it must be today [] In the Western society it is common
to interpret the Bible. Some reads it literately, but that is not the majority.
That is the way it should be in Islam, but that is a long way off (JyllandsPosten 13 September 2005).

Gone is the historical foundation of Magaards research. In is the

contemporary anti-Islamic priority of Jyllands-Postens editorials.
The two influential articles by Borg, the work of the think tank,
the commentaries by the three politicians, and Borgs front page story
about the belligerent Islam embrace an ideological dichotomy between
Us Danes and Them, the visibly different non-Western foreigners,
who are seen as inherently dangerous, since these differences are
unbridgeable, unchanging and unchangeable. A clash of differences
is unavoidable except, unless we Danes stop the culturally threatening others at the border. Those who are already within the border
must be contained in any way necessary including ridicule or intimidation. These articles convey that the culture of the Muslim migrants
is different, incompatible, and a threat, which must be acknowledged
and controlled.
Jyllands-Postens anti-Islamic discourse can also be seen in the stereotyping of Muslims as terrorists. Some of the less outspoken Danish
imams saw the depiction of the prophet Muhammad as a terrorist as
being the most offensive element of all the 12 cartoons, particularly
obvious in the bomb-in-the-turban cartoon by Kurt Westergaard.

Kurt Westergaards terrorist drawings

Thousands of pages were written about Muhammad cartoon crisis
by Danish journalists and commentators. None of them dealt with
Kurt Westergaards previous drawings with Muslim terrorists associa-

32

tions. The earlier drawings suggest that the association of Islam with
terrorism, or terrorists with Islam, is not an arbitrary coincidence in
Westergaards drawings. In my view including these drawing provide
a more full picture of Jyllands-Postens anti-Islamic discourse and
support the argument that the Muhammad cartoons of 30 September
2005 cannot be separated from the immediate historical context of
Jyllands-Posten and Denmark.
The first time I encountered this connection in a cartoon by
Westergaard was 12 April 1997. Westergaard was asked to illustrate
an article on the accusations of the Iranian priesthoods engagement
in state-terrorism. The drawing is that of a religious madman with
a beard and around head that turns out to be a bomb and holds
the caption: Clergy rule pointed out as guilty of state terrorism
(Prstestyret i Iran udpeges som skyldig i statsterror). (Jyllands-Posten
12 April 1997).
During the Mona Sheikh story in 2001 Westergaard drew an article
by opinion-writer, spokesperson for educational issues, Bertel Haarder,
which is an assignment requested by Jyllands-Posten. The figure
is easily recognized as Babar Baig, one of the three contested young
Muslim politicians. Their situation is the occasion that makes Haarder
write his opinion-piece. Baig is wearing Afghani clothes and militant
symbols spell out the supposed connection with the Taliban. The
drawing strengthens the articles message about invading, distrustful
Muslims, who are concealing their inner, real self symbolized by the
decapitated Taliban head under his arm. (Jyllands-Posten 27 May
2001). Baig is represented as a terrorist, which ultimately cost him his
possibility of being elected for political office.
Only five weeks before the publication of the bomb-in-the-turban
cartoon, on 27 August 2005, Westergaards illustrated a co-ed piece
written by a radical right winger, Henrik Gade Jensen Gade writes
about the meaning-parasites who paralyze public debate by
not telling the truth. Truth tellers are the radical right-wing Danish
Peoples Party, Karen Jespersen, and Kre Bluitgen, who are known for
their anti-Islamic involvement. What the truth is is not told, since it
is the debate that Gade is addressing.
Westergaards next drawing is of yet another religious mad man,
or terrorist, with a concealed bomb. Presumably, the man is a Muslim
and a ticking bomb represents the truth. If not stopped the bomb
will explode. A text is added to the cartoon illustrating the authors
core argument: How immoral: The naked truth. How decent: The
pure lie.

33

Westergaard, who grew up in a Christian Right (Indre Mission)

in Northern Jutland in the 1930s and during the Nazi occupation
1940-45 (Hansen and Hundevadt 2006: 16, Lykkegaard and
Westergaard 2010), explained the bomb-in-the-turban cartoon: The
idea for the drawing was to illustrate that terrorists receive their
spiritual ammunition from the fundamentalist part of Islam. It wasnt
directed at Muslims and Islam in general, but against that part which
inspires to and exploits through death and destruction20 (Westergaard
in Thomson 2006:42).
Kurt Westergaard makes this statement that the terrorist association
in the cartoon is restricted to terrorists and fundamentalist parts of
Islam. Westergaard seem out of touch with his readership. A Swedish
survey revealed that most Swedes associate the features of a terrorist
with that of a young, fanatic, male Muslim (Knutagrd & Scaramuzzino
2005). At the same time 85% of the instances Muslim or Islam were used
in the Swedish news media, they related to violence, crime, and terrorism
(Hvitfelt 1998). There is no reason to believe that these numbers would
be much different in neighbouring Denmark, where terrorism and
Muslims are intimately associated in popular consciousness as the result
of the news medias coverage. Westergaards drawing of Muslim madmen
and ticking bombs, even in the bomb-in-the-turban cartoon reflects this
bias, where all Muslims are most often lumped together in one category of
fundamentalists, since take the words of the Quran literately.
In Egypt the saying is repeated daily as a way to say hello and
goodbye, so when person says, take good care, (la ilah illa Allah),
another responds I will (Mohammad rasool Allah). Egyptians
use it everywhere on the road, in schools, in the shops, and on the
phone. Therefore Westergaard and Jyllands-Posten do no only attack
the most important symbol of Islam (Mohammad) through cartoons
degrading to his personality and message and insisting everyone accept
the degradation by reference to free speech, but they also attack the
everyday greetings known also as the announcement of Islam, which is
contesting ordinary Muslims as well.
Westergaards drawing connects the symbol, the religion and the
culture to terrorism. He therefore did not only help breed islamophobia in Denmark, but also succeeded in humiliating and disrespecting
an important religion that is part of the Danish society.
The linkage of terrorism with Islam in general is compelling in
Westergaards latest drawing; a drawing his employer, Jyllands-Posten
refused to publish. The cartoon is instead published by the radical right
Free Speech society. The burqa clad woman with a bomb as a belly
suggests Muslim fertility as a breeder of terrorism. (Snaphanen 2008)

34

Conclusion
Jyllands-Postens cartoons did not emerge in a vacuum as a test
of freedom of speech, but as part of an ongoing set of anti-Islamic
discourses within a broader political nationalism and a re-politicized
field of journalism. In the late 19th century Denmarks five largest
national newspapers, Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, Politiken,
Berlingske Tidende, Ekstra Bladet and B.T. were all integrated
elements of the political parties with competing stances on the
relationship between popular movements, the cultural nation and the
state. Denmark went through a transformation that reduced it from
being a multi-lingual and a multi-nation state to one nation with a
single language. During the transformation one crucial battle to define
Danish cultural nationalism popular social movements of peasants and
workers arose against the state and the social, educated, cultivated
and political leadership associated with the capital of Copenhagen.
In the early 20th century newspapers began freeing themselves from
the political parties, but remained ideologically in the neighbourhood
of their nursing political partys ideology. After this de-politization,
where traditional journalistic criteria for news making replaced
political agitation, newspapers was re-politicized again starting in
the late 1990s. When commercial competition and new technology
reduced the number of newspapers sold and reduced revenue of advertisement significantly daily commercial newspapers turned away from
competition getting the good story on the basis of journalisms core
criteria for news making and onto value-based journalist with Danish
values, moral positioning, and anti-immigrant rhetoric being some of
the upgraded tendencies. The story of the Muslim boy Amin illustrates
this emerging tendency in Jyllands-Posten during tabloid paper, Ekstra
Bladets, campaign in 1997.
Whereas Germany and Sweden historically had performed the
role of external others in Danish nationalism, the new nationalistic
post 1989 bursts (and calls for using Danish values as weapon of the
state) build its strengths through anti-Immigrant policies meant to
curb Islamic influence. Jyllands-Posten has played a significant role
in this process at least since 2001, which also builds on a historical
deep common sense appeal to the non-expert, non-academic audience
far from the capital against the dominant role and elitist position of
Copenhagen. In this chapter, I have shown four examples of JyllandsPostens developing anti-Islamic discourse since 2001.
First of all the editorials written during and right after the Mona
Sheikh story revealed a particularly confrontational stance. Danish
Muslims were reified into the same category as the Taliban and the

35

Islamic rulers in Iran. Dialogue was ruled out. Their voices were never
heard or loyally represented. Those who would argue against this interpretation were doomed political correct and misunderstanding telling
the truth for racism. In the second example, Jyllands-Posten adopted the
governments cultural war strategy (putting Flemming Rose in charge
of it). The battle of values took on political enemies, often called elite
judges of taste, as well as the countrys Muslim minorities. In the third
example of Jyllands-Postens senior journalist used a series of similar
articles based on demography and fear of small numbers to present
Denmark and Danish values as being threatened by the newcoming
Muslim immigrants with higher fertility. Jyllands-Posten endorsed the
article calling for politicians to do something. They did. A think tank
is established to look into some of the consequences of higher numbers
of immigrants. In the fourth example the populist association of Islam
with terrorism was (and continues to be) reproduced by JyllandsPostens senior cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. When he entered his own
newspapers cartoon project, Westergaard had a unique opportunity to
complete a task, where his own ideas were the object not the illustration
of someone elses text. But rather than coming up with anything new,
his drawing reflected the popular association of Muslims and terrorism
prevailing in all Scandinavian countries and thereby unduly amplifying
the problem from a few Arabic and Afghan mens abuse of Islam for
terrorist purposes to all Muslims.
The cartoon crisis continues Jyllands-Postens anti-Islamic
discourses. This is not to say that everything Jyllands-Posten is
writing about Islam is shaped by this discourse or that the cartoon
crisis trajectory is reducible to Jyllands-Postens value journalism.
But it is saying that the anti-Islamic position and discourse dominate
the editorial leadership of Jyllands-Postens cartoon project and its
editorials and becoming more and more predatory in the process.
In other words, the anti-Islamic trajectory overshadows explanations
that use freedom of speech activism as the key source of the cartoon
crisis. This process is not the outcome of an isolated process JyllandsPosten is undergoing but must be seen in the growing competition in
the domestic news market. In the following chapter, I will look closer
at the mutually enforcing discourses that rose during the peak of the
cartoon crisis in January and February of 2006.

36

CHAPTER 2
A STRUGGLE OF NEWS AND VIEWS:
ENTRY-POINTS TO JYLLANDS-POSTENS
CARTOON STORY
The popular Wikipedia free dictionary has listed some of the consequences of the cartoon crisis. A consumer boycott of Danish goods
took place in the Middle East; the embassies in Damascus, Beirut and
Teheran were set on fire; death threats and rewards for killing the
responsible for the cartoons were made, forcing cartoonists into hiding
or receiving protection; Danish flags were burnt in Gaza City and
elsewhere; and the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen
called the controversy Denmarks worst international crisis since World
War II. Wikipedia used BBC news to inform that Danish total exports
in the first half of 2006 had been reduced by 15.5% The Guardian is
the source for saying that fervent rightwing Americans have started to
buy Danish Bang & Olufsen stereos and Lego toys as another result
of the cartoon crisis. In 2007 a terrorist suspect in what is known as
the Vollsmose case,21 testified that Jyllands-Postens cultural editor
Flemming Rose was the target of a terrorist bomb plot. Other threats
were made against Danish MP Naser Khader. And in February of 2008
Danish police arrested three men for planning to assassinate cartoonist
Kurt Westergaard. Many Danish newspapers republished one or more
of the cartoons to make a statement of resistance against the threats
posed by the bomb-plan against Kurt Westergaard to the freedom of
the press and the freedom of speech. Also in February 2008 public
disturbances took place in the Nrrebro district of Copenhagen. Cars
were burnt and a school set on fire assumed by much of the press to be
a response to the re-publication of the cartoons, although local informants explained that the events were mostly unrelated to the cartoon
controversy but had to do with police harassment of ethnic minorities
in designated visitation zones. In June 2008 Pakistani police reported
on an attempt to blow up the Danish embassy in Islamabad (Hervik,
Eide & Kunelius 2008)

37

The sources used by Wikipedia to list some of consequences of

the cartoon controversy are taken out of the news stream. Such
web-posted overviews emerged in late January, February and March of
2005, several months after Jyllands-Postens initial publication of the
12 cartoons on 30 September 2005.
If violent global reactions and consequences are considered the end
point of the Muhammad cartoon story, where does it begin? Who is
responsible? What are the driving forces and agents behind the cartoon
stories? Stories need a beginning, but there are competing attempts
to define and control when to start and who to blame. The stories
about protests against Danish, Norwegian, French, British, Swedish
or American leaders, buildings, and companies did bring information
about what triggered the violence, whether the publication of the
cartoons, the Danish prime minister, Islamic regimes, local opportunists and so on. Along with the trigger came various explanations
offered by the global news media. These explanations were particularly vulnerable of distortion, since they were offered five months
after the publication of the cartoons in Denmark. Thus, daily international news coverage and opinion pieces frequently applied generalized
language such as protest against the Danish newspaper, JyllandsPostens publication of the cartoons, or a response to the Danish
cartoons. From an internal Danish perspective, Jyllands-Postens
cartoons are not referred to or perceived as being Danish. When
foreign coverage refers to the Danish cartoons and responses to the
Danish publication of the cartoons it ignores the internal variation,
since there are as we will see shortly - three competing discourses of
the media coverage in early 2006 (Hervik and Berg 2007).
The global media coverage of the Danish Muslim reactions to the
cartoon publication came in the shape of Al Jazeera news coverage on
October 10, 12, and 15 and Le Monde on October 18. However, the
global news coverage didnt make any major impact on the Danish
news coverage until early 2006, when it was commented on extensively. When the cartoons and the stories about the cartoons traveled
internationally, these events were described and interpreted by the press
in Denmark. Such interpretations are all communicative acts, designed
among other things to send a message to Denmark and the Danes
about what hundreds of thousands of Muslims around the world think
about their having insulted the prophet. While globalization is about
flows of media from sites of origin into new contexts for which texts
were never intended (Peterson 2003) so too is it about the constant
auditing of those media flows. In the contemporary world, we live in
audit societies (Power 1999; Strathern 2000) marked by assessment

38

rituals designed to determine what, exactly has happened, how it has

happened, and who is responsible. Thus even as the cartoons, and
stories about them are circulating around the globe, being appropriated
by local actors and reinterpreted by local audiences, accounts of these
acts, and assessments of their consequences are being constructed in
Denmark, day by day, event by event.
Control over how these events and actions will be defined and
evaluated is a powerful political stake, and the most significant actors
in the struggle over these stakes are those very people who played significant roles in the initial evolution of the cartoon crisis in Denmark.
They are thus struggling not only to define what is happening in the
wider world and assess its consequences for Denmark, but also to
establish their own responsibility for their roles in the conflict. Their
vehicles for this struggle are the same politicized news media described
in chapter one. Thus we find multiple Danish frames emerging as
actors seek to explain, appropriate, and assign responsibility for the
international crisis, and journalists interpret and represent their actions
and discourses to their audiences. Although one discourse dominates
both in Denmark and internationally, Berg and Herviks research show
there are three major competing discourses that each place responsibility on different agents for the cartoon storys violent trajectory and
compete in setting the news agenda.
One basic sign of these differences is the choice of label for the
Muhammad cartoon crisis. The dominant label is The Muhammed
crisis, (Muhammed-krisen), which is the conventional term used in
Danish journalism. The counter discourse prefers The caricature
crisis, (Karikaturkrisen), or The cartoon crisis (tegningskrisen).
Choosing The Muhammad crisis places the focus of attention on the
Prophet, Muhammad, and therefore on issues connected to Islam more
generally, while the choice of Caricature crisis suggests that the issue
is about the publication of the cartoons by Jyllands-Posten.
The differences also come out in the newspapers choice of
headlines. When Fogh Rasmussen on 30 January 2006 declared that
he personally never would have published cartoons that offended
religious people, the three largest newspapers placed this news on the
front page and suggested three different messages in their headlines:
Jyllands-Posten:
Politiken:

Fogh: We dont apologize (Fogh: Vi

undskylder ikke).
Fogh distances himself from the
Muhammed cartoons. (Fogh tager
afstand fra Muhammed-tegningerne)

39

Berlingske Tidende:

Pressured Fogh put himself at some

distance from the prophet cartoons.
(Presset Fogh lgger luft til profettegningerne). (Valeur 2007, see also
Larsen and Seidenfaden 2006:270-271)

The prime minister did separate himself from the cartoons, but he did
not apologize. The reader of Jyllands-Posten experienced a headline
that denoted support of Jyllands-Postens publication of the cartoons.
Politiken was the polar opposite and chose the verb distance (tage
afstand fra). This is a stronger interpretation than Berlingske Tidendes
put himself at some distance (lgge luft til). Berlingske Tidende was
not as polarizing as Jyllands-Posten and Politiken, but appears more
careful and nuanced assessment that Fogh is under pressure.
After a meeting on 13 February 2006 with Democratic Muslims
of Denmark a newly formed association, the headlines differed once
again significantly.
Jyllands-Posten:
Politiken:
Berlingske Tidende:

Service
check
of
Integration.
(Integration til service eftersyn)
Foghs meeting with favourite Muslims
(Foghs mde med yndlingsmuslimerne)
Fogh received fruitful suggestions (Fogh
fik frugtbare forslag) (Valeur 2007, see
also Larsen and Seidenfaden 2006:270271).

Berlingske Tidende conveyed optimism and Jyllands-Posten politeness.
Both papers saw Fogh as open-minded and a prime minister who
wanted to learn about possible improvements, which these Muslims
could help him do, since they knew what was going on in the Muslim
community. Politikens headline relied on sarcasm with its emphasis on
favourite Muslims. These good Muslims were the ones he wanted
to talk to. For Politiken he was talking to those whom he agreed with
and did not cause problems. The reader would read the headline as if
he was talking to the wrong Muslims.
Just as totalizing discourses emerge in various ecological niches
of the global mediascape that reify the very different actions and
discourses of Muslims around the world as a single event driven by
Muslim rage, so do much of European, North American and Arabic
news coverage tend to reify Danish discourses and actions, treating
Denmark as a unitary actor (Danish Muslims being simply recast as

40

Muslims). In the rest of this chapter, I will explore the ways in which
the cartoon crisis was assessed in Denmark and interpreted both as it
unfolded and afterward. I argue that the choice of name for the crisis;
the choice of discourse (whether intentional or not); and the choice
of newspaper in the politicized Danish field of journalism risk simplifying, distorting, and de-contextualizing what happened how and why
locally. One way to avoid lifting the story out of the context is to make
all sides of the choices available for analysis. Only then can we hope
to understand which parts of the cartoon story that moved successfully
on to the global scene and which remained local. Another argument
is that the cartoon story unfolds as a process with multiple causations
and a complexity that seem to escape, what the news media is able to
convey within its structures and practices, yet the story is still globalized. The question then is which story is told?
First I will deal with two significant actors in the first phase leading
up to the publication of the cartoons and the birth of the cartoon
crisis. One is the Danish author Kre Bluitgen, who most narratives
of the cartoon crisis begin with. The other is the editorial leadership
of Jyllands-Posten, whose spin-off project led to the cartoon publications. Both of these actors struggled to define what the cartoon publications of the Prophet Muhammed were about and their own role
in the cartoon story strictly within a domestic Danish setting. I then
move five months forward to the three Danish discourses on the media
coverage of the cartoon controversy inferred from the news coverage
15 January to 15 March of 2006 in the major Danish newspapers.
These discourses blame the imams, the islamists, the government, and
the nature of public debate for making the cartoon issue global and
violent with important consequences for Denmark.

The beginning of the cartoon story

Kre Bluitgen was unable to find an illustrator for his forthcoming
childrens book in Danish on the story of Muhammad The Quran
and the life of the Prophet Muhammad (Koranen og profeten
Muhammeds liv). According to Bluitgen, every illustrator he contacted
refused to work with him in fear of repercussions given the fact of the
customary ban against drawing the Prophet.
Bluitgen believes in - and actively supports - aggressive provocations arguing that we, the Danes, should approach multiculturalism
in a revolutionary way and overturn Muslim religion. We should be
daring and aggressive, maintaining that we have the right to make
fun of and reject all religious crap (Thgersen 2003:8). Marxist
skepticism is crucial in his socialist orientation, yet he is critical

41

of socialism in Denmark and wishes that it would openly support

Danish ideals such as being open minded, tolerant, and democratic
(Bjrnvig 2002:15).
Bluitgen narrates his identity as a socialist, atheist, and as someone
who can tell the true story of Islam for Danes and Muslim immigrants
without irony and in an informative exciting way (Ravn 2006).
He positions himself as being neither racist nor islamophobic, as he
subscribes to the (pseudo)logic that if you know a Muslim, then you
cannot be racist against Muslims.
An alternative way of casting Bluitgens position than a communicator of sober information for schoolchildren about the history of
Islam is as a man, who provokes Muslims and combats Islam and any
other religion. If you want to understand the third world, there is
only one way: to understand religion. All social and political conflict
in the third world originates in religion. And the third world has come
to Denmark (Bluitgen in MetroExpress 20 January 2006). Writing
the history of the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad, and insisting
on drawings of the Prophets face gives further substance to this alternative understanding of Bluitgens role. If Bluitgen had any problems
finding an illustrator, he could as well have turned to a Muslim
illustrator).
In an earlier publication, he went far in order to make a wake up
call to the left wing about what he saw as a naive and political correct
stance toward Islam. Among other things he suggested:
The Left needs to go on the offensive. Stage a procession down Nrrebrogade
in Copenhagen wearing burqas, chadors, and long, dragging jackets, with
strollers and baby carriages, all the way to Blgrds Plads. Then they should
throw everything into the trash and splash the Quran with menstrual blood.
(Bluitgen 2002:70)

A journalist of the national news agency, Ritzaus Bureau wrote a

story, Danish artists fear criticizing Islam (Danske kunstnere bange
for kritik af Islam) about Bluitgens problems, which Politiken (and
Information) chose to print on 17 September 2005 but with a different
headline: Profound anxiety about criticizing Islam (Dyb angst for
kritik af islam). Several newspapers picked it up the story and moral
panic was about to break out.
A story that breaks out on such a fragile basis suggests that the
topic is already highly politicized. We must also conclude that the
explanation of this storys energy lies beyond Bluitgens overstated
problems of finding an illustrator for his provocative writing project.

42

Another important actor in the narratives of the origin of the

cartoon story is Jyllands-Posten with its decision to publish 12
cartoons as a sign that these 12 cartoonists didnt back down from fear
of Muslim intimidations.

Jyllands-Postens project
Few narratives could ignore Bluitgens contributing role to the cartoon
story, but Jyllands-Posten plays the decisive role when it published its
reaction to the outcome of its own project testing the self-censorship of
Danish cartoonists. The Danish media coverage and literature treating
the cartoons are filled with discussions of Jyllands-Postens testing
project, whereas much of the foreign writing spends little space on the
invitation to draw the Prophet Muhammad.
In this section I argue that the original cartoon publication story is
entirely media-instigated.22 As such it must be understood in relation
to the politicized Danish field of journalism with its value-based
competition for readers (See chapter one).
On the basis of Politikens story Jyllands-Posten decided to launch
its own project, fearing what journalists coined a creeping selfcensorship was at play. It did not ask if the cartoonists chose not
to participate because they disapproved of Bluitgens project, but
moved forward with their own story using freedom of expression as a
provocation to find out, if cartoonists in Denmark held back on their
decisions to draw the face of the prophet Muhammad.
Flemming Roses letter to the cartoonists emphasized that JyllandsPosten is on the side of free speech. We therefore would like to invite
you to draw Mohammed, as you see him. The result will be published
in the newspaper in the coming weekend (Rose in Hansen and
Hundevadt 2006:15)
The test produced a negative result, Rose had foreseen, since the
12 cartoonists submitted cartoons to be published (on 30 September),
which indicated that self-censorship did not apply. There is 25 active
cartoonists in Denmark, of these 12 did the assignment, while some
didnt answer for contractual reasons, others were engaged in other
assignments, or simply didnt answer. Three answered and did not
draw. Two of them were critical of Jyllands-Postens project. According
to Flemming Rose, Jyllands-Postens cultural editor, only one person
(of the three) declined to draw referring to fear of violent reactions
from Muslims. (Rose in Kjersgaard-Hansen 2006). But since Rose
sensed of a broader phenomenon due to the instances mentioned in the
story about Bluitgens problems, he went on with the story.

43

The editor-in-chief, Carsten Juste, admitted that the survey lacked

validity and the story fell short of sound journalistic basis. Rather
than abandoning the project he chose to publish the cartoons in the
opinionated cultural section appearing on Fridays, since the project
was more a manifestation of an ideology than a journalistic story.
(Hansen and Hundevadt 2006:18).
At this point there is only one illustrator who feared the consequences drawing for Bluitgen, only one person who feared participating in Jyllands-Postens project, and Rose sense of a broader
phenomenon. A handful of additional facts underscores JyllandsPostens desire to provoke and insult Danish Muslims exceeded the
wish to test the self-censorship of Danish cartoonists.
Instead of repeating Bluitgens call for illustrators, JyllandsPosten asked satirical cartoonists to draw caricatures of the prophet
Muhammad as they saw him. Satirical cartoonists are by definition
more provocative than illustrators.
Secondly, two of the twelve cartoonists drew Bluitgen as an
integrated part of their interpretation of the drawing assignment. Bob
Katzenelson drew Bluitgen using an old Danish proverb for expressing
excessive luck: Receiving an orange in the turban. Bluitgens orange
in the turban had the text written: Publicity stunt (PR-stunt).
Cartoonist Annette Carlsen assigned him a similar role as the number
7 in line-up of possible suspects of stirring up the claims of selfcensorship. The suspect is obviously Kre Bluitgen, who is the only one
carrying a sign. The sign says Kres Publicity. Call and get an offer
(Kres PR. Ring og f et tilbud). A third cartoonist, Peder Bundgaard,
who drew face of Muhammad with the Islamic star and crescent
felt provoked by the aggressive nature of those cartoons that were
drawn by illustrators already working for Jyllands-Posten. I feel that
my colleagues and I have been lured into the swing by a newspaper,
whose motives have been self-assertion and provocation for the sake
of provocation. Pushed to the extreme it looks like as if mine and my
colleagues harmless drawings have been used as hostages to legitimize
Jyllands-Postens own permanently employed illustrators, who have
delivered other widely different militant and provocative drawings
(Tuxen and Lerche 2005 quoted in Larsen and Seidenfaden 2006).
The three interpretations emphasize the cartoonists recognition of the
provocative nature of Bluitgens claims and Jyllands-Postens project.
Bluitgen supposedly wanted to get attention to his forthcoming book
on Islam, while Jyllands-Posten wanted to provoke Muslims.
A third indication turned up when rival newspaper Politiken made
a round of call to the cartoonists. The journalists found that 15 out

44

of 29 cartoonists, who did not draw for Jyllands-Posten, said that

they were against the idea itself and did not fear Muslim reactions.
One cartoonist found it a bit suspicious that Flemming Rose gave
little time to respond. He had received the letter of invitation in the
mail on Wednesday and had to respond by noon Friday two days
later. Cartoonist Lars Refn, who drew a second generation migrant
schoolboy named Muhammed pointing at a Persian text on the
board: The editorial team of Jyllands-Posten is a bunch of reactionary
provocateurs (Jyllands-Postens redaktion er en flok reaktionre
provokatrer), found cartoonists caught in a double bind. If they said
yes they would offend Muslims, if they said no they would affirm
self-censorship (Thomsen 2006: 34).
A fourth indicator of Jyllands-Postens role in deliberately
provoking Muslims can be seen in the fact that four cartoonists were
tied in different ways to Jyllands-Posten. Three of them were directly
employed: Kurt Westergaard (bomb-in-the-turban), Poul Erik Poulsen
(man with turban with halo and possibly a pair of horns), Rasmus
Sand Hyer (man with grey beard, eyes covered by a black bar and
flanked by two women in niqabs), while a forth Erik Abild Srensen
had retired from Jyllands-Posten (five times repeated schematic figures
with the text Prophet, you crazy bloke! Keeping women under yoke!
(Profet! Med kuk og knald i lget som holder kvinder under get!).
None of these responded with any irony to the assignment itself and
are generally regarded as among the most controversial. This is unlike
five other drawings, which to various degrees poke fun of JyllandsPostens initiative.
Fifthly, in spite of the dubious character of the project, Editor-inchief of Jyllands-Posten decided officially to back up the project by
investing the 30 September editorial on the project called The Threat
of Darkness (Truslen fra mrket).
A provocation against one of these self-important imams or mad mullahs is
immediately laid out as a provocation against the Prophet himself and the
sacred book, the Quran and then we have the trouble.
Then the Islamic spiritual leaders feel the need to grumble and from this
follow an army of less spiritually equipped people that feel an urge to follow
what is interpreted as the prophets commands and in the end killing the
presumptuous [...] Across the world satire is done on film, theater and in
books, but no one allows themselves to make fun of Islam. That is due to
a hoard of imams and mullahs, who feel entitled to interpret the prophets
word, cannot abide the insult that comes from being the object of intelligent
satire. (Editorial, Jyllands-Posten, September 30, 2005).

45

If I read Jyllands-Postens editorial right, Jyllands-Posten wishes

to provoke Muslims who represent Islam in the Danish public. The
12 cartoonists dared having their provocative cartoons published in
Jyllands-Posten, which is not to imply a provocation of the Prophet
and the Quran, but a necessary provocation and a good opportunity
to make fun of Islams hoards of imams and Mullahs. Jyllands-Posten
does not engage in an explanation of how this distinction is meaningful.
Moreover, the headline of the text accompanying the cartoons is The
Face of Muhammad and in Roses letter of invitation to the cartoonists the task is described as drawing Muhammad as you see him,
which makes it difficult to maintain that the purpose is to insult imams
not the Prophet.
In the end my argument is that Jyllands-Posten is not covering a
real world event outside the media such as an accident at a nuclear
plant, a serious traffic accident, a politician caught lying, and so on,
but initiated and instigated the cartoon project itself and used it to
make its own statement about Muslims and Islam.
Most people associate the cartoon crisis with the violent, global
reactions around the world, which they witnessed on television news
in February. In the next section I want to look closer at the Danish
news media coverage at this point, which is the point of entry for
journalists, readers, viewers, and listeners. With the outburst of violent
reactions and political reactions in Muslim countries, journalists and
commentators had to explain the background to these protests. Many
of them turned to the previous Danish media coverage. How then was
the cartoon crisis covered by the Danish news media?

Three Danish Frames of Interpretation

In a previous study of the Danish media coverage of the cartoon
violence in early February 2006, we (Berg and Hervik 2007, Hervik
and Berg 2007) found that Danish news journalism had become
re-politicized and not following traditional criteria for good journalism
when it comes to stories on Muslims and Islam. The study examined
232 Danish news articles with Muhammed (12.115 articles)
Freedom of Speech (6.295) as code words for the period 15 January
to 15 March 2006. We reached the workable number of 232 articles
by selecting 7 nationally circulating daily newspapers (Morgenavisen
Jyllands-Posten, Politiken, Berlingske Tidende, Ekstra Bladet, B.T.,
Kristeligt Dagblad and Information) and limiting the genres to editorials, columns, feature articles and op-eds by Danish intellectuals and
politicians directly related to the publication of the 12 cartoons.

46

On the basis of a frame analysis inspired by Robert Entman (1993)

and Claes de Vresse (2002), we examined news article applied to 232
Danish news article (Berg and Hervik 2007, Hervik and Berg 2007)
and found the sample to fall into three fairly clear frames of interpretation, or more broadly discourses23, which we called: Freedom
of speech as a Danish freedom; Freedom of speech as human right
threatened by Islamism, and The demonisation of Muslims and
political spin is the issue not freedom of speech. (See fig 1)
Figure 1. The three frames a struggle of news and views (Hervik 2011)
FRAMES

Freedom of speech as
a Danish freedom

Demonisation of
Muslims and political
spin is the case; not
freedom of speech

Islam, Islamism, the

dark and uncivilized
Middle East

Freedom of speech; A
Western universal
human right
threatened by
Islamism
Islamism with a lack
of human rights such
as freedom of speech

What is the problem?

Who created the

problem?

Islamic rulers and the

Danish Imams

Islamists in the Middle

East

Jyllands-Posten, the
Government and the
Danish Peoples Party

What actors are

presented in what
roles; who are the
good ones, who are the
bad ones?

The Danish we are

the good ones
defending freedom of
speech, the ones
limiting the freedom in
any way are the bad
ones.

We in the West
are the good ones; the
rulers in the Middle
East are the bad ones.

There exists no we
in this framing, it is
rather moral who is
put in this position,
whereas JyllandsPosten, the
Government and the
Danish Peoples Party
are the bad ones.

What can be done?

Fight, be provocative
and stand firm in the
fight for freedom of
speech.
A language
characterized by
dichotomized terms:
us and them, a
black and white
world perspective

We can fight the fight

for the oppressed
populations in the
Middle East
Orientalist language

The solution is
dialogue and coexistence.

What is the language

of the frame?

Demonisation of
Muslims in Denmark
and political spin, not
freedom of speech

Didactic, aggressive,
frustrated.

Freedom of speech as a Danish freedom echoes the governments

prime spin strategy, to insist on freedom of speech (Hervik 2008).
By focusing on free speech in late October 2005 the government was
able to transform the cartoon story into a question of which countries
have freedom of speech and democracy (Denmark and the Western

47

world) and those who do not (primarily countries of the Middle East).
According to this frame Islam is the core problem, and represented
as a religion of violence and intolerance (see for instance JyllandsPostens headline on 11 September 2005, chapter one). Fear is further
evoked by reference to tragic events, such as the murder of Dutch
film maker, Theo van Gogh, the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and
more generally through the use of words such as threat, fear,
pressure, self censorship, war, and battle as against the
positive words associated with the Danish society: freedom, trust,
democracy and Danishness. A tabloid editorial argues:
In Islamic role-model societies such as Saudi-Arabia women are kept in
hoards as veiled slaves. People are beheaded at the market. Whipping is a
common form of punishment. Stoning of unfaithful women is an approved
form of sanction. Other religions are forbidden. Freedom of press does not
exist (Ekstra Bladet 1 March 2006).

The main actors of the frame are the Danish imams, Islamic dictators
and regimes, and the 11 ambassadors, who send their letter of concern
to the Danish prime minister. Within the simplifying black and white,
good and bad world view, those people who are critical of the
government and Jyllands-Posten, and those, who are more generally
responsible for what is argued to be Denmarks earlier nave acceptance of immigrants, including other Danish newspapers, particularly
Politiken, left winged politicians, relativists, the politically correct,
and intellectuals. But more than anyone, the Danish imams are held
responsible for the global reactions, which is based upon their lies
and spreading of misunderstandings. The two groups of imams
that traveled to the Middle East in December 2005 are regarded as
mobilizing international discontent, violent demonstrations, and
boycott of Danish goods.
Attention is generally diverted from Denmark, except to the extent
that the journalists and libertarian politicians see themselves as heroic
defenders of democratic ideals and do-gooders, who send try to export
our democratic ideals.24 Criticism of the Danish government is
virtually non-existing.
The second frame resembles the first, but holds more nuances.
Freedom of speech as a universal human right threatened by
Islamism is salient in another government friendly newspaper
Berlingske Tidende. Freedom of speech is a universal human right, but
it has legal restrictions and should not be used for unnecessary provocations like Jyllands-Posten did. This frame became particularly strong
during the globally reported cartoon violence, when West against

48

Islam narratives replace the importance of the national context. The

sponsors of the frame have identified Islamism as the real enemy
regardless of where it is.
The Muhammed-crisis is something else and more serious: A global
confrontation with fascism in the shape of Islamist extremist and the
mistreated people in Middle East regimes, which is a safe haven for following
religious fascism (Editorial Information 2 March 2006).
The point is that the fight against totalitarianism in the current context has
to be conducted as a fight against the totalitarian thinkings specific forms of
repressions rather than against diffuse Islamism: The fight must include the
repression of women, of speech-, faith- and freedom of assembly, of other
human rights (Information 4 March 2006).

Accordingly, the frame supports the victims of Islamism in Muslim

countries, to whom it employs a language of sympathy. The imams,
who lead the Islamists, regardless of whether they are in Denmark or
in Muslim countries, are seen as the guilty ones in suppressing and
misguiding fellow Muslims.
On closer scrutiny it is not clear who the Islamists precisely are
except that the category seems to absorb all unwanted Islamic beliefs
and identity markers, hence suggesting that it is synonymous with
Islam, or more accurately the distinction seem more to refer to whom
one considers good and bad Muslims, those Muslims we like
and those we dont (Mamdani 2004). In fact this is a instance of the
Bush-doctrine, a doctrine that divided Muslims into good Muslims
anxious to detached themselves from the 9/11 disaster and support
us in the war against them, which left Bad Muslims to be all
those who had not been proven good, thus under the obligation to
prove their credentials (Mamdani 2004). This second frame, much
like the first one, puts the blame on Danish imams, Islamists, and
suppressed people. It is characterized by discourses of sympathy,
human rights, respect and tolerance, but through the Orientalist
language, where the suppression of women, stoning, and human rights
violations, Islamism becomes a totalitarian ideology to be fought and
dialogue is not desirable. There is no attempt of presenting the Others
point of view. Instead it is preoccupied with placing immediate blame
on the imams and more profoundly on Islamists, while avoiding the
role and responsibility of the Danish government.
The third frame The demonisation of Muslims is the issue, not
freedom of speech runs counter to both the other frames. Adherents,
(Politiken and many intellectuals), try to re-frame the antagonistic

49

categorization of Danes/Westerners and Muslims, them and us,

good and bad by presenting Muslims as co-citizens and by
arguing that this is not a case about freedom of speech, since no-one
denied Jyllands-Posten the right to publish the cartoons. JyllandsPosten has the right to be stupid is repeated again and again. Instead,
this third frame argues that the cartoon crisis has become the expected
outcome of an islamophobic newspaper, a government who has sold
its soul to the radical right, Danish Peoples Party, and failed to handle
the crisis properly particularly, when it came to rejecting a meeting and
dialogue with concerned ambassadors.
The cartoons and the debate following it reflect how Islam and
Muslims are perceived and treated in Denmark:
Islam is under attack in Denmark and has been for some time, especially after
September 11. Muslims have been prevented from building Mosques, from
making burial places, from wearing scarves and holding meetings. Muslims
have been pestered in the streets with words and with slaps. Muslim stores
and clubs are vandalized. Muslims are kept under surveillance, are being
arrested and are being portrayed in the press as uncivilised and abnormal,
if not terrorists. The cartoons were the last straw. Let us kick those who are
already lying down. Islamophobia is raging. Muslims in Denmark must react;
anything else would be unnatural (Sune Skadegaard Thorsen 2006).

Since Denmark has such clear freedom of speech, freedom of the press,
and a government that clearly cannot intervene in the editorial process
of Jyllands-Posten, this frame would ask, why cant the government
go out and criticize Jyllands-Posten of unnecessary provocation and
intentionally insulting, mocking and ridiculing Muslims in Denmark?
(Wver 2006).
The frame chooses to avoid words such as fight, war and
defence and writes instead about respect, dialogue, responsibility, civilized behaviour and co citizens. The solution to the
cartoon crisis and problems of integration lie in dialogue, citizenship
and respect.
The two frames, Freedom of speech is a Danish issue and
Freedom of speech; A universal human right threatened by Islamism
have recently merged in blaming imams, Islamists, and bad Muslims
as the reason for the drastic development of the cartoon story. In
February 2008 three men were arrested for having specific plans to kill
cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, who had been under police protection
since the fall of 2005. Most Danish newspapers re-published his
cartoon on 13 February 2008 as an act of resilience and solidarity.
Chief editor Lisbet Knudsen of Berlingske Tidende was interviewed

50

on National Public Radio and appeared much like a government

spokesperson, when she explained Berlingske Tidendes wish to defend
Danish values such as free speech. In 2005 before she became a head,
Berlingske Tidende had refused to publish the cartoons, arguing that
it was an unnecessary provocation on the part of Jyllands-Posten. In
the meantime Knudsen had become the new chief editor of Berlingske
Tidende, and now the paper wanted make a statement about free
speech. In her blog Knudsen evokes the clash in a bipolar world which
has taught us: that we could not maintain the illusion that we, with
our more than 5 million Danes and perhaps 400 Christian-cultural
friends in Europe sail in a different boat than the 1.2 billion Muslims.
Berlingske Tidende did not print Kurt Westergaards drawing recently in order
to ridicule or mock anyones religious feelings. We printed it to emphasize that
we insist on living in a country with free speech, where Kurt Westergaard has
the right to draw like de does, without his life is being threatened, and where
we as a newspaper, in the name of freedom of the press, can choose to print
the drawing, knowing that we can risk being met by debate and criticism for
doing it. We insist that religion and religious questions not being exempted
from being challenged and debated, when they are used for political purposes
(Knudsen 2008)

Also, government critical Politiken published one of the cartoons.25

None of the papers explained how it is possible and necessary to
publish the cartoon without further ridiculing or mocking the feeling
of many Muslims and why written statements would not suffice to
make a statement. Knudsens statement and the re-publication illustrate the political nature of the Danish news media and the antiIslamic undercurrent of the Danish public debate. Many Muslim
imams have received death threats and been harassed as well, but did
not receive the same attention as Kurt Westergaard (See for instance
TV2 news, 6 February 2006). The freedom of speech, freedom
of expression, and rights of Danish Muslims are not dealt with.
Journalists and others that I spoke to abroad argued that Knudsens
message could equally well be interpreted as we insist on the rights
to insult, mock and ridicule ordinary Muslims and treat them as
potential terrorists, which once again underlines the political nature
of the Danish news editors and newspapers in Muslim and migrant
issues. More than 17 newspapers chose to re-publish the cartoon on
13 February 2008.
In the following, I will show how two competing packages of
blames have been played out in the news media by looking at the
blame of imams and Islamism on the one hand, and on the other hand,

51

a set of interwoven blames directed at the Danish government and

Jyllands-Posten for shaping the storys violent path as it did.

Blaming the imams

Again and again the adherents of first and second frame blamed the
imams for causing the cartoon crisis.26 While all imams are blamed,
only four imams are treated at any length. Already prior to 30
September 2006 Jyllands-Posten and tabloid paper Ekstra Bladet had
criticized some of the imams with critical personal attacks. JyllandsPosten ran for instance news articles critical of the radical and controversial imam at the Grimshj mosque in rhus, Raed Hlayhel who is a
Wahabist scholar with a degree from the Sharia Faculty in Medina.27
Journalist Orla Borg quotes him for saying in a Friday prayer that
women can be the instrument of Satan against men and that he
encouraged the listeners to take the message home to teach everyone to
follow the sharia laws (Hansen and Hundevadt 2006:25-26).
The Troublemaker and the Prophet
The Blame the imams strategy is played out in the publication (The
Troublemaker and the Prophet. The Muhammed Crisis behind the
Scenes) (Provoen og Profeten. Muhammed krisen bag kulisserne) by
John Hansen and Kim Hundevadt (2006).
As I mentioned in the introduction these authors are journalists
working for Jyllands-Posten; the book is published by Jyllands-Postens
own publishing company; economically supported by Jyllands-Posten
Foundation and referred to as Jyllands-Postens official version of
the Muhammad cartoon crisis. Provoen og Profeten is a subjective
account of two journalists who are motivated and committed to give
their contribution to the larger debate. The subjective, quality can be
seen in the character description in at least two ways. While the bad
guys, the Danish imams, are described through their more or less
bizarre statements and suspicious characters with personal flaws,
then key actors working for Jyllands-Posten are described in positive
terms. These characterizations precede the event to describe, providing
them with a loaded value frame, which is another artefact of their
discursive strategy.
Most people in Copenhagen had not until Friday 14 October [2005] been
thinking about Jyllands-Postens cartoons, but those, who coincidentally
passed by the big demonstration in the Town Hall Square and read the
banners realized that lines in a newspaper can evoke strong feelings (ibid.:40)

52

At this point the reactions to Jyllands-Postens publication had been

exposed in the Danish press for at least eight days. But Hansen and
Hundevadt write that it is only with the sight of the Muslims, who is
lead by the imams, Copenhageners would make them wonder what
went on behind the scenes.
The big demonstration revealed that in only two weeks the imams had
succeeded in mobilizing a broad band of Muslim organizations, and Abu
Laban and other imams, which initially hesitated, was now more or less
forced to throw themselves into the Muhammad case in order to keep their
position and meet any accusation that they did not defend the Prophet with
sufficient enthusiasm (Ibid.:42)

Powerful imams recruit other imams and form alliances that organize
their protests against Jyllands-Posten. Danish opinion-makers, it is
argued, only begin to criticize Jyllands-Posten after the demonstration
in Copenhagen. Imams are to blame. Hansen and Hundevadt also seek
to provide some nuances in their approach to Muslims in Denmark.
The debate showed, that there were others on the Muslim side besides
a few hypocrites (ibid. 44), but instead a number of Muslim
believers and cultural Muslims, who supported directly or indirectly
the publication of the cartoons (ibid.). The use of this strategy is
widely used in Danish politics. During the cartoon crisis, a new organization emerged called Democratic Muslims in Denmark with ethnic
politician of The Social Liberal Party, Naser Khader as a controversial
chairperson. Khader is severely disliked by many immigrant Muslims
for being a religious and cultural apostate, yet popular among many
Danes for his enthusiasm for Denmark and his hard-line criticism of
what he sees as radical Muslims in Denmark. A supporting association
shadows the association, which is the meeting ground for a number of
anti-Islamic personalities. The idea of good Muslims, whom we
will talk to, and bad ones, who are undemocratic, and someone
we dont want is all over the Danish debate. Bad Muslims were
responsible for the cartoon crisis, like they were responsible for
terrorism against the US, England, Spain and elsewhere. But argues
Mahmood Mamdani this could not hide the central message of such
discourse: unless proved to be good, every Muslim was presumed
to be bad. All Muslims were now under obligation to prove their
credentials by joining in a war against mad Muslims. (2004:15)
Middle East Quarterly
Another example of the Blame the imam strategy appears in an
account of the cartoon crisis written by Pernille Ammitzbll and

53

Lorenzo Vidino After the Danish Cartoon Controversy (2007). The

authors blame particularly Raed Hlayhel for being the creator of the
cartoon crisis. Due to Jyllands-Postens spring 2005 series, Hlayhel,
had an axe to grind with the Danish press and with Jyllands-Posten in
particular (2007:2). Thereby, a motive has been established. Another
imam, Ahmed Abu Laban is branded as a terrorist, since he has connections to Osama bin Laden and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.28 The
authors rely on controversial radical right-winger Tine Magaard, for
analyzing a sermon delivered by Hlalhel in which, he sees his position
in Denmark as similar to that of Muhammad in Medina, when he was
doing alliances with tribes of polytheists and Jews. Moreover, the story
goes, Hlayhel is being visited in rhus by wealthy Saudi business men
indicating that big money is behind as well as radical Islamism.
This article appeared in the journal Middle East Quarterly,
which is published by The Middle East Forum. The Forum is
devoted to promoting American interests in the Middle East with
neo-conservative, anti-Islamic, historian, Daniel Pipes as director and
publisher.29 Pernille Ammitzbll is a journalist with Jyllands-Posten. It
hardly comes as a surprise then, that the Blame the imam strategy is
uncritical of the governments rejection in October 2005 of a meeting
with ambassadors and the role of Jyllands-Posten in the development
of the cartoon publications into a crisis (Hervik 2008).
International News
The International news media also produced and reproduced the
Blame the imam strategy. The Independent in the United Kingdom
carried a story on 10 February 2005 How a meeting of leaders in
Mecca set off the cartoon wars around the world and a similar
article appeared in the New York Times, At Mecca Meeting, Cartoon
Outrage Crystallized 9 February 2005, see also Le Figaro 9 February,
and Libration 3 February). These newspapers are quoted and paraphrased by several academic papers as a reliable source saying that
there Danish imams activities in the Middle East, here in Mecca at
the emergency meetings of the Organisation of the Islamic conference
(OIC), are what caused the cartoon story to become a crisis.
The Independent and The News York Times quote Danish imam,
Ahmed Akkari, for saying that Muslim leaders had worked for more
than two months in Denmark without eliciting any response.
We collected 17.000 signatures and delivered them to the office of the prime
minister, we saw the minister of culture, we talked to the editor of the
Jyllands-Posten, and we took many steps within Denmark, but could get no
action. (Fattah 2006).

54

The Independent and New York Times do thereby distinguish

themselves from the Danish debate in bringing a possible reason for
the Muslim delegations travel to the Middle East.
The Danish press spent many pages covering the anger and criticism
of two Muslim delegations to the Middle East. Politicians mostly
from the right demanded that the imams should have their residence
permit scrutinized. I feel bad about people to whom we have given
residence permits in our country going out and do harm to our country
in this way (Denmarks Radio 2006). Leader of the Danish Peoples
Party calls the imams activities treason (Kjrsgaard in Larsen and
Seidenfaden 2006:151). Tabloid Ekstra Bladet is relentless in their
comment:
We ask the devil to punish every dishonest Muslim, who travels around with
false messages about the Danish nation. And we ask Allah to export all evil
Muslims, who have taken shelter in the Danish democracy, while the use
their efforts to smear it. Let them get some space in one of the 56 Muslim
dictatorships, which they are so busy travelling to even if they once fled them
(Ekstra Bladet 13 January 2006 cit. in Larsen and Seidenfaden 2006:151)

Bloody Cartoons
The success of the Blame the imams strategy can also be seen in the
Bloody Cartoons film made by Danish journalist Carsten Kjr and
shown worldwide in the fall of 2007 as part of the Why Democracy
series as Denmarks contribution. Bloody Cartoons is presented
as a documentary about how and why 12 drawings in a Danish
provincial paper could whirl a small country into a confrontation
with Muslims all over the world (Why Democracy n.d.). To open the
film Kjr says, Here is the man who started it all. According to
most narratives that would be author Kre Bluitgen, cultural editor
of Jyllands-Posten, Flemming Rose, cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, or
even the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. But the man
in question is imam Raed Hlayhel, who, Kjr notes, is no longer in
Denmark.
The point of departure for the documentary is the imam, whose
collaboration with other imams and their travels to the Middle East is
what caused the sudden outburst of violence. How did it happen
to Denmark? asks Kjr, framing Denmark as an innocent little
victim. Most of the documentary is filmed outside of Denmark. Only
at the end does the Danish Prime Minister speak, yet he is exempted
from critically questions like those posed to the foreign Muslims of the
Middle East. He is approached as a high-level commentator, not as a
part of the crisis.

55

Instead of covered the story from several perspectives the

documentary gives a politicized, platform for presenting the cartoon
crisis that represent Jyllands-Postens and the governments strategy for
handling the crisis by blaming the imams and insisting on free speech
being the issue, while neglecting the role played by the newspaper and
government.
The Blame the imam strategy comes out particularly clear in
the claim that nothing occurred in Denmark until the imams went to
the Middle East. Spokesperson of The Liberal Party (Venstre), Troels
Lund Poulsen, claimed, for instance, that there were practically no
international reactions during the first three months after the cartoon
publications until the two imam delegations travelled to the Middle
East to stir up support (Larsen and Seidenfaden 2006:62). Such statements ignores that Al Jazeera followed the story in early October;
Saudi paper Al Hayat mentions the cartoon publications shortly
after; a letter of concern comes from the 11 ambassadors; from the
Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in mid October; Islamic
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) begins to
cancel joint activities, and the cartoon story receive coverage in various
newspapers internationally in November. The story is more domestic
than global in the beginning, but the international engagement and
coverage is present soon after the publication of the cartoons.
In January 2006 additional blame goes to the Norwegian Christian
paper Magazinet, who decided to publish Jyllands-Postens cartoons.
Hansen and Hundevadt argue that the story was quieting down and
considered mostly a domestic issue until this re-publication took place
by Magazinet.
Blame is also put on the powerful imam Abdul Rahman Alsidis,
who was speaking on 10 January in Mekka, on the Eid al-Adha, which
is the conclusion of the Pilgrimage to Mekka. The authors refer to
the large television audience on Arab satellite channels, which they
estimate will enable him to reach more than a hundred million viewers.
Without mentioning neither Denmark nor Jyllands-Posten by name he
encouraged Muslims to oppose, what he called an intentional campaign
against the prophet Muhammed. It was hardly noted in Denmark, but
constituted the first ill omen that strong interests would breathe new life into
the case of the 12 cartoons: The religious priesthood in Saudi -Arabia, has
an enormous influence in the entire Muslim world (Hansen and Hundevadt
2006:126-127).

Mixing a powerful imams speech to a large audience in Mecca and in

the Middle East with the background information that the priesthood

56

in Saudi Arabia is influential is interesting. The blame resides with

strong interests and the power of the religious priesthood to
influence people in the Muslim world and deflect attention from
Jyllands-Postens media-instigated insult, mockery, and ridicule and
the governments rejection of dialogue.
Danish Newspapers, Danish books on the cartoon issue, global
news and the wikipedia embrace the publication of the cartoons by the
independent Egyptian newsweekly, Al Faqr, based in Cairo to blame
the imams and suggest Arabic double standards. On 17 October 2005
Al Faqr analyzed six of the cartoons with the headline Continued
Boldness. Mocking the Prophet and his wife by Caricature. On 10
February 2006, Jyllands-Posten reported that the cartoons had been
published in an Egyptian paper, Al Fagr, on 17 October 2005, noting
that there had been no protests at that time. Most sources that refer
to Al Faqr note that its publication of the cartoons did not provoke
any uproar or protests, which inadvertently is taken as evidence that
nothing happened until the Danish imam delegations came to the
Middle East.30
The absence of a response does not lie with the Muslim delegations travelling to the Middle East. Overviews and time-tables of the
cartoon crisis were mostly written in January 2006 and onwards,
four to five months after the original publication and after the
Danish prime minister denied meeting the 11 ambassadors about
the public debate ethnic minorities in Denmark. The cartoon story
wasnt called a crisis from the beginning. And the publication of the
cartoons by Jyllands-Posten was strictly speaking not in itself the
cause of reactions. Jyllands-Postens publications are interpreted and
communicated through various filters. Al Jazeera brought short news
pieces October 10, 12 and 15, as the popular news channel follows
the unfolding story. Al Jazeera also brought news about the Danish
Prime Minister, who refused to meet with the ambassadors, again as
part of the same story. From the vantage point of the Middle Eastern
audience, I will argue that interpretations of what the publication of
the 12 cartoons represents and the Danish governments rejection of
a meeting that includes talking about the cartoons is missed in the
puzzlement about why Egyptians didnt react violently to Al Faqrs
analysis of the six cartoons. The mixture combines a publication that
represents Muslims as terrorists and a government, which refused
to talk to concerned citizens and ambassadors about these representations. It is this mixture, which enabled the cartoon crisis to reach
global proportions a mixture that was not mixed until five days after
Al Faqr had published its analysis.

57

There is no doubt that the delegations travelling to the Middle East

did play a significant role in shaping the trajectory of the cartoon crisis.
However, their travel was also used for a Blame the imam strategy
that blow the importance out-of-proportion. But more importantly,
it serves to deflect attention from the domestic scene leading the
delegation and the 11 ambassadors to consult their countrys authorities and network for support of their cases. A domestic scenario
where many Muslims in Denmark feel disrespected and aggressively
attacked in media, policies, and public intimidation.

The Hostile Danish Debate on Minorities

According to the adherents of the third frame Demonisation of
Muslims and political spin is the issue; not freedom of speech, Rune
Engelbreth Larsen and Tger Seidenfaden, Denmark became the site
of publication of the cartoons because of Danish governments lack
of basic respect and recognition of Muslims and the hostile Danish
debate. This is the second set of blames. The anger felt in the Muslim
world cannot be reduced to domestic circumstances in Denmark and
accordingly the Danish government cannot be made responsible for
this (Larsen and Seidenfaden 2006:318).
But the fact that it became precisely Danish newspaper cartoons that
triggered this crisis has entirely specific Danish causes. Jyllands-Posten is first
and foremost responsible for this and second to that the government and the
prime minister have a considerable and more fatal responsibility as they did
(Ibid 318-319). (Emphasis original).

Tger Seidenfaden is chief editor of Politiken, the third largest

newspaper and Rune Engelbreth Larsen is a historian of ideas writing
for Politiken. The two authors published The Caricature Crisis
(Karikaturkrisen) in 2006 with the large publisher Gyldendal and
include much of their writing in Politiken on the cartoon crisis. They
are core exponents of the third frame, which is not well covered in
the foreign news coverage. Their comprehensive book is written
in a polemic argumentative style critical of the government, the
supporting Danish Peoples Party, and Jyllands-Posten.
The Caricature Crisis meticulously follows Jyllands-Posten and
the governments arguments on a day-by-day basis countering them
throughout the different phases of the cartoon crisis. I will focus
on two key areas, where they invested a special effort, which is the
governments handling of the story and it is the material carried by the
imam delegations to Muslim and Arab leaders in Lebanon, Syria and
Egypt. In both cases Politiken asked experts to go through the critical
texts and give their assessment of their content.
58

The Prime Ministers refusal to meet with ambassadors

A vigorous essentially domestic cartoon narrative sees the Danish
governments handling of its refusal to meet with 11 Islamic ambassadors in mid October as a key factor explaining behind cartoon story.
The ambassadors represented Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan,
Egypt, Indonesia, Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Libya, Morocco,
and the Head of the Palestinian General Delegation to talk about the
Danish public debate on Muslims. The Danish media is divided on this
issue whether the prime minister should meet with the ambassadors,
since this could be seen as giving in to Islamic pressure, while other
journalists argue that meeting national authorities is an essential part
of what ambassadors work is about. This split of opinion falls along
the lines of three major frames of interpretation, so that those who
blame the imams and Islamists argue that the prime minister shouldnt
hold a meeting, while those who blame the government uses the denial
as a constitutive part of their argumentative strategy.
Prime Minister, Fogh Rasmussens refusal to meet with the ambassadors has been scrutinized and broken down into bits and pieces by
Politikens journalists. Politiken called in language experts to interpret
the answer and went on to engage the ambassadors for their comments
to the denials. Here, I will only deal with the letter itself and Prime
Ministers refusal to meet and leave out further contextualization.
The ambassadors wrote:
Excellency,
The undersigned Ambassadors, Cda.i. and Head of Palestinian General
Delegation accredited to Denmark take this opportunity to draw your
attention to an urgent matter.
This pertains to on-going smearing campaign in Danish public circles and
media against Islam and Muslims. Radio Holgers remarks for which it was
indicted, DF MP and Mayoral candidate Louise Freverts derogatory remarks,
Culture Minister Brian Mikkelsens statement on war against Muslims and
Daily Jyllands-Postens cultural page inviting people to draw sketches of Holy
Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) are some recent examples.
[]
We deplore these statements and publications and urge Your Excellencys
government to take all those responsible to task under law of the land in
the interest of inter-faith harmony, better integration and Denmarks overall
relations with Muslim world. We rest assured that you will take all steps
necessary.
Given the sensitive nature of the matter, we request an urgent meeting at
your convenience. (Larsen and Seidenfaden 2006:326-327)(My emphasis)

59

The letter of concern is not exclusively about the Cartoons but

rather three other recent separate incidents. A local radio station,
Radio Holger, operated by neo-Nazis, had used anti-Islamic rhetoric
on the air and was later closed by the authorities. Another racist
incidence involved Member of Parliament, Louise Frevert, who
compared Muslims in Denmark with a cancer tumour that had to
be removed from Danish society. A third incident referred to in the
letter concerned Member of the cabinet and Minister for Culture
Brian Mikkelsen, who maintained that contemporary Muslim culture
is evolving in Denmark with Middle Age norms and anti-democratic
ways of thinking. This is the new front of the culture war
(Mikkelsen 25 September 2005 in Larsen and Seidenfaden 2006:18,
see also chapter one). Mikkelsen is also responding to an increasing
number of Danish groups, such as Christian ministers (see also
chapter four and Mogensen 2008), former ambassadors (Hansen and
Hundevadt 2006, Larsen and Seidenfaden 2006, Thomsen 2006),
pedagogues, psychologists (Sanday and Information December 2005)
doctors, and authors (Brgger et al.; Andersen 2005; Lerche 2005)
(for a general treatment of these protests see also Information 30
December 2005, Borg and Olesen 2006, Nicolaisen and Abdullah
2006), had raised their concern for the development of the Danish
debate about immigrants, descendants, and refugees.
The Prime minister answered:
The Danish society is based on respect for the freedom of expression, on
religious tolerance and on equal standards for all religions. The freedom of
expression is the very foundation of the Danish democracy. The freedom
of expression has a wide scope and the Danish government has no means
of influencing the press. However, Danish legislation prohibits acts or
expressions of a blasphemous or discriminatory nature. The offended party
may bring such acts or expressions to court, and it is for the courts to decide
in individual cases. (Larsen and Seidenfaden 2006:329) (My emphasis)

As shown the Prime Minister ignored the request for a meeting. The
answer emphasized, that the government has no means of influencing the press. Notwithstanding the considerable use of political
spin to influence the press, the Prime Minister repeated in press interviews that he had no legal means to interfere with the Jyllands-Postens
choice of stories and editing. That is of course not what the 11 ambassadors representing 730 million people were asking for (Larsen and
Seidenfaden 2006).
Freedom of speech is precisely what allows the Prime Minister
(who is also Minister of the Press) to criticize the publication of the

60

cartoons without interfering in the legal rights. There is nothing that

prevents the Prime Minister in using freedom of speech to condemn
or endorse the publications from a political perspective. As it were he
used his freedom of speech not to speak at all.31
Fogh Rasmussen in Jyllands-Posten 30 October 2005
On 30 October the Prime minister did come out to explain his
position further, namely in an interview given to the government
friendly Jyllands-Posten called Fogh: Freedom of speech must be
used for provocation. The Prime Minister told that readers that it
can be necessary to use free speech for provocation, when the timing
is taken into consideration and the public criticism of his refusal to
meet the ambassadors, and the newspaper chosen for the interview,
he is obviously referring to the evolving cartoon story. In fact he gave
the interview with Jyllands-Posten as part of a larger spin strategy that
could divert attention from critique of the governments decision not
to meet with the ambassadors and for associated the governments
policy on refugees, immigrants and their descendants (Hervik 2008).
Certain countries lack basic insight and understanding, for what a true
democracy is [] A Palestinian political representative criticized the drawings
for being an attack on Islam and Muslims. Anders Fogh Rasmussen responded
to the criticism by attacking the representative for not understanding what
the principles of a true democracy are and what free speech is about Lerche
(Svane and Maressa 2005).

Fogh Rasmussen argued that using freedom of speech, as a provocation

is okay and sometimes even necessary. To give in on the principle
of freedom of speech is to help terrorists who want to scare us into
restricting basic values of our society (ibid.). He is, in other words,
endorsing Jyllands-Postens project (Berg and Hervik 2007), which
gives further strength to Politikens criticism of both the government
and the Jyllands-Posten.
The Muslim delegations 43 page dossier
One Muslim delegation travelled to Egypt 5-11 December. Another
delegation left on 17 December and statyed the rest of the month
in Lebanon and Syria. There is only one imam among the five men
travelling to Egypt. Mohamad Al-Khaled Sambad is imam in Odense
and the prison in Nyborg. Zeki Kocer is head of the umbrella organization of Turkish migrant associations (DMGT). Sarwar Shoudri of
Minhaj-ul-Quran that is based in Pakistan. Egyptian born business
man Ahmad Harbi and Nour-Edin-Fattah of Islamisk Trossamfund

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(The Danish Islamic Society) completes the five-person group. The

delegation that went to Lebanon was all of Lebanese background:
Kassem Said Ahmedd and Mahmoud Mansour of The Islamic Society
in Denmark (Islamisk Trossamfund) in Copenhagen, imam Raed
Hlayhel and his right hand imam Ahmed Akkari from rhus.
While the debate was heated and statements confrontational only
one politician evoked delegations democratic rights of the to travel.
It is their right and their freedom of speech to travel around agitating
their case. That is a condition of democracy (Elizabeth Gerner
Nielsen, Politiken 7 January 2006, Larsen and Seidenfaden 2006:153).
The experts consulted by Politiken concluded that even if there
were some errors in the delegations dossier these errors were mainly
sloppy mistakes, not making up any serious misrepresentation or
spreading false information. One of the more critical assessments was:
It is clear that the dossier and newspaper writings in Egypt make
an effort to push the case to the border without crossing the border,
which is called misinterpretations, but they take it as far as they can.
(Larsen and Seidenfaden 2006:153).
The dossier contained images that were not published in JyllandsPosten, which provoked a heated debate. One such image was a man
with a pigs snout and pigs ears and represented as Muhammed.
Tabloid paper Ekstra Bladet calls the material fraud and JyllandsPosten was also upset. Larsen and Seidenfaden explained that the
photograph was part of the hate material that the Muslim organizations have received after the publication of the cartoons. The photograph itself has nothing to do with Islam, except that it was mailed
to intimidate Muslims in Denmark, but is a photograph from a ritual
celebration in a village in southern France. (ibid.: 153).
Larsen and Seidenfaden counters the blame of imams by emphasizing the circumstances that made the imams travel to the Middle East
facilitated by the ambassadors. They argue that it is only a natural
reaction of the Muslim ambassadors to turn to the home-government
for consultation, when the government decline to meet and listen to
their concerns and for Muslims to network with Muslim organizations
to help gaining moral, theological and political support. Sponsors of
this strategy seek to resist antagonistic, mutually exclusive categories
that treat Muslims generally as enemies, and instead humanize their
activities and identities, for instance by emphasizing their obvious
and rightful wish to find support for their case, wherever they could.
The reason for acting as they did must be seen more broadly in the
fertile background that does not recognize the Muslim as co-citizens in
Denmark and at the same time deny dialogue. For this counter frame

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Demonisation of Muslims and political spin is the issue; not freedom

of speech there isnt a single cause, but a process with several causes.
One of these is the general tone of debate in the Danish public sphere,
a tone that has Jyllands-Posten at the forefront. The publication of the
12 cartoons is a sign of this. The Danish government contributes by
making a political blunder and even refusing to acknowledge its own
blunder.

Conclusion
The Danish media frame Freedom of speech as a Danish freedom
is the source used globally and appropriated by much of the foreign
media, which happens also to be the version employed by the Danish
government and Jyllands-Posten and not the versions of Berlingske
Tidende or Politiken. Choosing one rather than the other misrepresents and simplifies a story that is far more complicated and nuanced
than the news media has conveyed. It also tells us that some stories are
more successful in the global public sphere more readily than others.
We inferred the three frames in the Danish media coverage in early
2006, when the cartoons and stories about the cartoons had traveled
internationally. These frames include telling the Danish audience about
how millions of Muslim felt and responded to the cartoons and the
governments refusal of dialogue, but also telling the readership about
their response to the global events and global coverage connected to
the cartoons. Blame the imams is one such strategy that deflects
attention from Jyllands-Posten and the Danish governments role in
the cartoon crisis. The tone of debate and the governments handling
of the cartoon crisis are intensely criticized in the frame The demonisation of Muslims and political spin is the issue not freedom of speech
sponsored by Politiken. Politikens counter-frame seeks to document
that the imams and Muslims should not be blamed as sole responsible
for the evolution of the cartoon story. Instead the tone of debate which
Jyllands-Posten is seen as a contributor to, the government and the
supporting cast of the Danish Peoples Party create the cluster of agents
responsible for the violent response abroad and the boycotts of Danish
goods. Both of these frames must be accounted for if distortions are
to be minimized. This is particularly relevant for news coverage and
academic treatment that enter the story five months after the domestic
course of events and interpretations had taken place.
One way to summarize the layers of arguments of the discourses
and analytical counterarguments is to pose some simple questions of
what came first and second, or (if event x, then action y):

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- Would there have been a cartoon story, if Bluitgen had not had
problems finding illustrators for his book? Definitely. Bluitgens
problems were not much more than a pretext for Jyllands-Postens
political engagement and anti-Islam discourse.
- Without the publications of the Muhammed cartoons, would
there have been a diplomatic call for a dialogue meeting with the prime
minister? Certainly. The ambassadors raised several other items. Their
letter extended the concerns expressed by other groups of people, who
have argued that the Danish debate had gone too far and that it had
been discriminating and intimidating the ethnic minorities, particularly
Muslims and migrants of non-Western origin.
- Without publication of the cartoons, would there be a globalized
Muslim protest? Unlikely, protests were already taking place in
Denmark in all kinds of ways, yet not a salient feature in the Danish
news media. A couple of the cartoons, the accompanying text and
Jyllands-Postens editorial were too controversial. The editorial and
political leadership of Jyllands-Posten pushed their story too far.
- Had a meeting between the prime minister and the ambassadors
taken place, would ambassadors have consulted their home governments and would the imam delegations have travelled to the Middle
East? Most likely not. Two news cartoon stories in Denmark and
Sweden are particularly interested. In October 2006 the free daily
Nyhedsavisen published images from the meeting of the Danish
Peoples Partys youth organization. The meeting included an internal
competition to see who would go farthest in vulgar representations
of the prophet Muhammed. A member of a group of artist called
Defending Denmark had infiltrated the group and documented
the competition. One of the drawings depicted Muhammed as a beer
drinking urinating camel; another drew him as a terrorist attacking the
capital of Copenhagen (Nyhedsavisen 2006). Unlike the Muhammed
cartoon crisis, the Danish Foreign Office immediately invited Muslim
ambassadors in Denmark to a meeting that explained the case. The
Prime Minister sent out a press release in which he distanced himself
from the drawings (Espersen 8 October 2006). When Swedish artist,
Lars Vilk, published another controversial cartoon, as a provocation
the story didnt develop, since the Swedish government was quick to
consult and engage Muslim leaders in dialogue.
Narratives of the origin of the controversy frequently begin with
author Bluitgens assertion that he couldnt find an illustrator to his
book, since illustrators were afraid of Muslim anger. Bluitgens story
was only another inspirational source for Jyllands-Postens already
divisive and polarizing approach to Muslim practitioners and Islam.

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An approach that treats Muslims more like enemies to be fought

rather than co-citizens to be lived with peacefully. On September 30
when Jyllands-Posten explained its project, Bluitgens quandaries were
eaten up by the newspapers larger discourse.
The inflammatory rhetoric of politicians speech reported by the
news media (Muslims are like cancer tumors, we need to approach
Muslim culture as a culture war) became a government problem in mid
October 2005, when it refused to meet with 11 ambassadors to talk
about their concerns about the derogatory anti-Islamic rhetoric. With
the government attracting the media spotlight a set of spin moves were
launched to move the focus away from the bad image of anti-Islamic
discourse to a winning spin image of a government that heroically
stood firm on free speech without giving any acknowledgement to the
enemy, who either hadnt understood democracy or wanted to impose
censorship (Hervik 2008). Instead of participating in free speech
arguments about Jyllands-Postens cartoons and the constitutionally
established limits of free speech, the debate was successfully transformed into a question of having free speech as such or not having it.
The free speech spin was chaperoned by an equally successful Blame
the imams spin. With the transformation of the issue to free speech,
the Prime Ministers endorsement of Jyllands-Postens publication of
the cartoons in Jyllands-Posten on 30 October, and the embracing of
the Blame the imam strategy, the government and Jyllands-Posten
sponsored the same frame Freedom of speech as a Danish freedom.
During the Danish media coverage of the Muhammad cartoon
crisis, we looked at cultural differences were increasingly represented
and perceived as the prime generator of conflict, with Danes being the
reasonable good guys and Muslim imams supported by Muslims as
those, who fail to understand democracy free speech. Such was also
the political spin, but how does culture, ethnicity, identity,
civilization and conflict relate? This is the topic of chapter three.

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CHAPTER 3
THE DANISH CARTOON CRISIS AND
THE DISCOURSE OF ETHNIC IDENTITY
CONFLICT
Many Danes, including Muslims, perceive the Danish Muhammad
cartoon controversy as an issue of clashing identities. On the one hand
one can find indigenous Danes, who see themselves as democratic,
rational, modern, and even post-cultural, and on the other hand,
Muslims, who reacted violently towards Danish and Western
symbols, thereby revealing what has been represented as their
true identity as un-enlightened beings guided by easily ignited
tempers and ignorant people with a democratic deficit. We
saw earlier how the Danish prime minister spun his damage control
strategy as an issue of who has freedom of speech and who does not,
thus aggressively rejecting Palestinian criticism of Jyllands-Postens
publication of the 12 infamous cartoons as a failure to understand
democracy and free speech. Others have consistently used the clash
of civilization narrative to explain the sequence of events following
the cartoon publication as a clash in the fault line between civilizations or religious identities as it were. In one instance of this spin a
Muslim representative is put into a strait-jacket by the Prime Minister
(Jyllands-Posten, 30 October 2005), when he explained what the crisis
is about and that her voice was neither appreciated or so it seems
not relevant to listen to. In fact Muslim voices were seldom heard in
the media coverage or in the academic treatment of the cartoon crisis
except for a few Muslim leaders and outspoken Imams.
Samuel Huntington himself sees tensions between the Western
and Muslim civilizations as the backdrop of the escalating crisis
(Huntington 2007). For Ahmed, a Muslim participant in a focus group
we recently conducted as part of another research project, publishing
the cartoons with Roses accompanying text (2005) explaining how
Muslims, because of their Muslim identity alone, should accept being
mocked, ridiculed and insulted is precisely the kind of identity
frame that made him, many other Muslims, and Muslim organiza-

66

tions protests against Jyllands-Posten from the very beginning (Hervik

2011). During the Muhammad cartoon crisis, Muslims seemed to be
perceived as being amenable only to direct, confrontational, cultural
(non-linguistic) communication. In other words the Muhammad
cartoon story is perceived and narrated as an identity conflict, or an
ethnic conflict in the popular sense of the term.
When many journalists, politicians, and many academics, above
all political scientists and international relations scholars, see nationalist and ethnic conflicts as the most common type of conflict after
the big ideologies vanished with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the
collapse of the Soviet Union, other scholarly approaches steadfastly
maintain that even if ethnicity and religion are dimensions of a
conflict, they do not cause so-called ethnic conflict (Schlee 2007:1516). In many ways ethnicity and the idea of visible differences,
roots, ancient hatred, and cultural difference are regarded
as the sources of conflicts and problems of integration. This view
has permeated the mass media and popular consciousness in much of
Western Europe and beyond. Accordingly, the terms ethnic conflict
and identity conflicts merit critical scrutiny in order to disclose
their accidental baggage and to overcome the embodied polarizing
Us/Them narratives that unfold as vicious schismogenetic spirals
of increasing violence, crime, carelessness, political activism, and
recruitment for radical purposes of all sorts on the Us side as well
as The Other side.
In this chapter I discuss how an ethnic identity conflict focus can
help us understand - or lead us to misunderstand - the Muhammad
cartoon case, which is perceived and represented by many as an
identity conflict. We can ask: What can the cartoon crisis teach us
about ethnic conflict? Before this question can be answered, we need
to look closer at how influential intellectuals have dealt with identity
conflicts. I will use insight from this theoretical scrutiny to challenge
the view of the Muhammad cartoon conflict as a simple issue of
clashing identities. In addition, I will include a section on Muslim
voices drawing from individual interviews and focus group interviews
held in the fall of 2008.

The ambivalent use of the terms ethnic and ethnicity

The terms are blurred from the outset. In fact I will argue that
conceptual confusion risks distorting and simplifying the understanding of conflicts. What academic studies broadly describe as
ethnic conflict or ethnic tolerance easily ends up in an inclusive
concept of ethnicity that comprises foreigners, immigrants, guest

67

workers, blacks and whites as in Togeby (1997); nationalism as the

territorialisation of persistent, earlier senses of subjective ethnicity
(Smith 1986), i.e., the ethnic core of modern nations; Catholics and
Protestants in Northern Ireland as ethnic (Eriksen 2003); or Chinese,
English, Arabs and French (Connor 1994).
One source of confusion is the absence of a distinction between
everyday (including populist) uses of the terms and the use of the terms
within a theoretical framework. According to the Oxford English
Dictionary the term is still used by many educated people to describe
all political units that are not of the familiar nation and nation-state
kind (Chapman et al. 1989). Studies in Denmark, Sweden and Norway
(see Hervik 2003) have revealed that the schematic features evoked by
local connotations of ethnic and ethnicity refer to of visible and
audible features of minority groups, who are usually not part of the
nation. The majorities in each country do not see themselves as truly
ethnic (see also Frankenberg 1994), although the term is increasingly
used to separate majority from minority. Such a use has the often
unintended effect that the Us/Them division once again reproduces
mutually excluding categories, since an ethnic Dane cannot also be
a person with ethnic minority background (Hervik 2003, 2011).
Sometimes ethnic is used synonymously with national groups
fighting each other, such as Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians (also called
Muslims) in the early 1990s. Sometimes racial or racialized groups
such as African-Americans are approached as ethnic groups, who are
comparable to immigrants and whose social problems are reduced to
problems of integration. Besides the erroneous approach to AfricanAmericans as immigrant groups rather than a racial group consisting
of numerous ethnic groups, this immigrant analogy can be found in
Gunnar Myrdals An American Dilemma (1944, see Omi and Winant
1994) and American neo-conservatives in the 1980s, which approach
African-American social problems as the problem of integration of
migrants. In these cases the focus is primarily on the African-Americans
and little on the relations of power between them and the hegemonic
social groups and the state.
On other occasions ethnic is used instead of Muslim, and
then associates with civilizational or cultural. In Denmark
Muslim cultural identity is used as interchangeably with non-Western
migrant. Such associations make sense primarily in terms of its racializing features (Petersen 2009), since these segments of the population
are comprised of people who speak hundreds of languages, come from
several continents, and have little in common besides being visibly
different and of non-native descent. On the other hand, such associa-

68

tions make sense in terms of the routine practice of the news media,
for instance, when news about terrorists in Saudi Arabia is accompanied by footage of women wearing burqas (Denmarks Radio 25
March 2010).

The identity turn

In the post-1989 world - the era of the identity turn - it is a common
(mis)perception that Muslim identity is in itself incompatible with
European culture and must be defended through compulsory socialization in shared national values (Titley 2009:148), or through a
strengthening of national core values (Huntington 2006:491).
According to many peace and conflict scholars, most intra-state
conflicts after 1989 are ethnic (see for instance M. Brown 1993:81).
Political scientist, high-level political consultant and commentator Samuel Huntington (Crozier et al. 2005)32, whose work is the
embodiment of the identity turn, asked what would be the biggest
source of conflict in the post-Soviet era. Culture, civilization,
and identity were the answers (Lewis 1990).33 And civilizations
are basic and far more fundamental than differences among political
ideologies and political regimes (Huntington 1993:4). Danger lurks
when identity is in play, since enemies are essential and you cannot
love what you are unless you hate what you are not:
In the post-Cold War world flags count and so do other symbols of
cultural identity, including crosses, crescents, and even head coverings,
because culture counts, and cultural identity is what is most meaningful
to most people. People are discovering new but often old identities and
marching under new but often old flags, which lead to wars with new
but often old enemies.
One grim Weltanschauung for this new era was well expressed
by the Venetian national demagogue in Michael Dibdins novel, Dead
Lagoon: There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless we
hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are. These are the old
truths we are painfully rediscovering after a century and more of sentimental cant. Those who deny them deny their family, their heritage,
their culture, their birthright, their very selves! They will not lightly
be forgiven. The unfortunate truth in these old truths cannot be
ignored by statesmen and scholars. For peoples seeking identity and
reinventing ethnicity, enemies are essential, and the potentially most
dangerous enmities occur across the fault lines between the worlds
major civilizations. (Huntington 1996:21, emphasis added)
Huntington evokes Dibdins novel Dead Lagoon from 1994 to
emphasize the necessity to hate someone in order to know who you

69

are, but as I have argued elsewhere, the inspiration is rather German

law professor and political theorist Carl Schmitts idea of the political,
according to which you treat your adversary as either friend or
foe (Hervik 2008, 2011).
Huntington invests academic capital in the terms culture, civilization and identity and ends up with a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But also with an analytically vague concept of identity and civilization to some extent relying on elder historians of civilization like
Toynbee and Spengler he cannot decide whether Africa is a civilization
or not (Hannerz 1999:366). Nonetheless, Huntingtons political ideas
become a successful narrative circulating the global public space,
where it is listened to and repeated in various ways by the mass media
and saturates popular consciousness largely by blaming those who are
different from us for causing problems. To be sure, the narrative
of clash of identities is not the outcome of expert knowledge of civilization, identity, and differences; rather it states security concerns
that enable an ideological focus on the danger of certain, but not
all, cultural and religious differences.34 Embodied in the ideology of
incompatible identities is an idea of how to react towards the incompatible other. While Huntington does not spell out what set of actions
his ideology should produce, neo-conservatives use it to advocate the
use even duty to use of military superiority to overcome conflictcreating, incompatible rogue states. Neo-conservatives like Daniel Pipes
(a well-known, American writer active on the Danish scene) strongly
argue that the only solution to the conflict in the Middle East is Israeli
military victory. On a micro-level, strategies against the incompatible
other, the poor and the unemployed are zero-tolerance and negative
dialogue (Hervik 2011; Hervik 2012; Wacquant 2004). Negative
dialogue relies on a belief that certain conflicts are unavoidable and
certain cultural encounters are impossible to resolve. It is destructive
because it constitutes an active refusal to engage in dialogue, even in
those instances when it employs a dialogical vocabulary only to mask
what is actually a monologue (Hervik 2011:246).
In analyses of ethnic conflicts and the concept of ethnicity,
Huntington is not the academic expert to turn to.

The analysis of ethnic conflict

One of the most cited sources for the study of ethnic conflicts is
political scientist and security advisor Michael E. Brown, particularly
his article on the causes and implications of ethnic conflict that first
appeared in 1993. When it comes to defining ethnic community,
Brown turns to sociologist Anthony Smith, who define it as: a named
human population with a myth of common ancestry, shared memories,
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and cultural elements; a link with a historic territory or homeland; and

a measure of solidarity (Smith in Brown 1993:28-29).
Smith argued that there must be an ethnic core to all
nationalism(s) and that core is by no means arbitrary, as historians like
Ernest Gellner have claimed they often are. Even if this core is molded
through history, there is still a shared sense of community, ancestry,
culture, and attachment that explain the perseverance against historical changes. Mexican sociologist Natividad Gutirrez worked on
both Smith and Gellners approaches, which she saw as interdependent.
By asking whether present-day nations have historical and ethnic
origins, or if these phenomena are created only by modern objective
conditions, rendering the historical background irrelevant (Gutirrez
1999:2), she made it clear that the two opposing approaches could not
be dismissed, but had to be complementary. Although Brown calls for
serious academic studies, he picks the primordialist-leaning Smith
and leaves out Gellner and other prominent ethnicity scholars most of
whom are constructivist-oriented. In fact, he aptly bypasses much of
the theoretical research on the concepts of ethnicity and identity that
could have provided him with a more complex approach.
Such an approach could be that of anthropologist John Comaroff,
who has repeatedly argued that:
the substance of ethnicity and nationality can never be defined or decided in
the abstract. And why there cannot be a theory of ethnicity or nationality per
se, only a theory of history capable of elucidating the empowered production
of difference and identity (Comaroff 1996:166, see also Comaroff 1987).

In his own top-down approach to ethnicity, political scientist Victor

Le Vine inadvertently provides an example of what happens when you
try to decide ethnicity in the abstract. Summarizing how ethnicity is
currently being used, Le Vine claims that ethnic refers to a subgroup
living among others in a foreign country (Le Vine 1997:46). While
we can agree on the attribute subgroup or even interest group,
but not the idea of being in a foreign country. The Mayan and Aztec
people in Mexico, for instance, may sometimes feel that they are in
another country, but they are not. They are ethnic groups, original
inhabitants and citizens of the nation-state Mexico. Likewise, the Sami
of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia share a similar status within
their respective nation-states.
The relational aspect of ethnicity
Norwegian anthropologists Fredrik Barth (1969) and Thomas Hylland

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Eriksen (1993) are influential pioneers in the study of ethnicity, particularly in their emphasis of ethnicity as an aspect of a relationship
rather than an attribute of a group. Barth argued against Clifford
Geertzs and Max Webers view of identity as an intrinsic, essentialist
core from which ethnicity springs, which comes under threat of disappearing when groups encounter other groups and modernization.
Barth and his colleagues found that it was precisely in the contact with
other ethnic groups that ethnic identity was constructed most vividly.
Accordingly, they move away from Smiths view without dismissing
the ethnic content entirely.
According to Browns systemic explanations of ethnic conflict
one requirement is that two or more ethnic groups must reside in
close proximity (1993:6). This criterion carries the assumption that
ethnic conflict is a conflict involving ethnic groups, not unlike Barths
(1969) emphasis that ethnicity requires the explicit identification
vs. another ethnic group with whom it is in some degree of contact.
After Barth published his famous book research has shown that the
ethnic groups other, or the relational aspect, may not refer exclusively to encounters between one ethnic groups and another, but also
between an ethnic group and the nation-state, the market, modernization, hegemonic social groups, and globalization, which contribute
to the production of ethnic identities (Cohen 1978, Handelman 1977,
Williams 1989, Wilmsen and McAlister 1996).
Comaroff helps us direct attention the study of ethnicity towards
the relations of power.
Ethnicity typically has its origins in relations of inequality: ethnogenesis
with hierarchical social division of labor. Ethnic identities are always caught
up in equations of power at once material, political, and symbolic. Seldom
simply imposed or claimed; more often their construction involves struggle,
contestation, and, sometimes, failure (Comaroff 1996:166).

Ethnicity and ethnic conflict must therefore always be analyzed as

an issue of identity and as a relationship of power, which is usually
asymmetric with the group defined as ethnic group as the weaker
part of this relationship.
Ethnicity and migration
Barth (1969) and Geertz (1973) originally developed their anthropological theories of ethnicity among non-Western groups primarily in
Afghanistan and Indonesia. But in American sociology the term ethnic
has been used for European migrants to the US since the 1920s. The
empirical basis of American ethnicity theory was immigration to the

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US. European migrants coming to the US were approached from the

perspective of immigrant groups assimilating or becoming part of
cultural pluralism.
The origins of the concepts of ethnicity and ethnic group in the US, then,
lay outside the experience of those identified [] as racial minorities; AfroAmericans, Latin Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans
(blacks, browns, reds, and yellows, (Omi and Winant 1994:16)

Later, when migrants began entering into Western European labour

markets, they were approached through the ethnicity paradigm.
Migrants were increasingly seen as ethnic in the sense of being visibly
different than the native people. From a native perspective, migrants
were talked about as ethnic and minorities which meant the
attributes of these groups such as language, clothes, gestures, belief
in shared ancestry, and traditions. The term was not used to denote
distinct groups as it is done in anthropology; groups were lumped
together and talked about as ethnic, if they were different from
norms of the host population.

Ethnic groups as ethnicized minorities

The Barthian and the Smithian lines of thinking are remarkably weak
when it comes to noting and inferring the hidden aspect of power
relations beyond social interaction and always present in the relational
aspect. Scholars like Walter Connor and Anthony Smith do not see an
ethnic group as a subgroup within a larger society. This definition
makes ethnic group synonymous with minority, Connor objects,
and he goes on to assert that the Chinese are not a subgroup (Connor
1994:43).
Wilmsen & MacAllister (1996) have argued strongly (along with
Comaroff) against pretending to build universal top-down theories
of ethnicity and nationalism and for seeing ethnic groups precisely as
minority groups. Groups of people with perceived commonalities of
religion, race, language, or territorial homeland (D. Brown 2007) do
not simply build ethnicity and awareness of themselves from intrinsic
properties, but through an interactive relationship with the market,
hegemonic groups, the nation state, nationalism, and the idea of the
nation. This view takes us back to Gutirrez, who argued that ethnicity
could not be reduced to either identity or the modern conditions,
but both of them set within actual and situated social practices and
cultural production of ethnic groups. In her view, there is a dominant
identity that is capable of imposing high culture and social cohesion on
the minorities and there is a collection of small ethnicities exposed to

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various degrees of assimilation or disappearance (Gutirrez 1999:23).

Pieterse sees such articulation as minority groups being ethnicized or
dominated by outsiders with such an effect that new ethnic groups
may be produced by different ethnic groups (Pieterse 1996). Ethnicity
is a multi-sided social construction, but not an arbitrary invention.
One example of imposed ethniczation comes from Denmark. Here,
the approximately 10000 Somali refugees became ethnicized by the
news media and local political leaders in early 1997, when they as a
group were considered to be too different to be integrated into Danish
society (Hervik 1999, 2011). In the too different to be integrated
discourse, the meaning of culture merged with the meaning of
race and the idea of incompatible traditions and values.35 How did
this happen?
Within a few weeks the newspaper coverage revealed a new genre:
Somali stories (Fadel, Hervik and Vestergaard 1999). These stories
emerged as a thematic coverage of problems connected to the cultural
difference of Somali refugees in Denmark. The coverage build entirely
on the overwhelming and puzzling difference.
The regional newspaper, Fyens Stiftstidende, can be used to illustrate this ethnization by external forces. The newspaper published
nineteen articles about the Somali refugees between 11 February and
11 March 1997, eleven of them written by the same reporter, Mikala
Rrbech. The articles used a total of forty named sources, particularly
three local politicians. In eight of the articles local politicians were
the only sources, suggesting that these stories are about the Somali
refugees, but without Somali perspective or participation. Nineteen
stories conveyed critical comments about the Somali refugees by
experts and people working with the Somalis, but the Somalis own
voices were absent from the articles. In fact they were seen to be so
different that experts, such as ethnographers, were called upon to
bridge the communication gap and speak for them (Fadel, Hervik and
Vestergaard 1999). Furthermore, the purpose was not to convey information as such but to inscribe the newspaper into the national political
debate about the difficulties faced by the local authorities and natives
in meeting these difficult Somalis (besvrlige somaliere). Two politicians said, The Somalis do not belong in these lattitudes. They should
be sent home and [The Somalis are] undeniably the most culturally
strange and also the most demanding (14 February 1997). The statements became the basis for further news articles, whose key message
was that the Somali refugee problem is a problem that can be solved
only through more restrictive policies and by sharing the burden via a
more just distribution of the Somalis in Denmark.

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The stories also revealed that news journalism is moving further

away from critical journalism into journalism where journalists
become conductors of a cacophony of political statements.
Without seeing ethnicity, and identity more broadly, as relational,
definitions of ethnicity end up stressing attributes of an ethnic
community while ignoring relationships to others the wider political
field including the nation state, the market and globalization.
Weak states and the study of ethnic conflict
In an article about causes of internal conflict Michael E. Brown
(2001) does incorporate some of these relational aspects of power. In
his review of the literature on internal conflict, he includes political
factors such as discriminatory political institutions and exclusionary national ideologies. Central to these are the use the concept
of weak state, which, he argues will experience violent conflict and
individual groups within these states feel compelled to provide for
their own defence; they have to worry about whether other groups
pose security threats (Brown 2001:6).
While I do not dispute that there is a link between weak states
and the eruption of ethnic violence, I do question the instrumental
use of the state as the legitimate and unquestioned unit of analysis,
while at the same time employing a rigid conceptual analysis of the
terms internal conflict and ethnic conflict. International Relations
scholars employing the weak state concept rarely ask what global
relations actually produce weak states. How come the weak
states most often are locked in post- or neo-colonial relationships
with economically powerful states, alliances of states, and international corporations?
Awareness of the methodological nationalism (Wimmer and GlickSchiller 2000) could have helped Brown to include a more critical
treatment of the literature on internal conflicts. However, Brown does
note that in some places nationalism is based on ethnic distinctions
(rather than a civic one), which he sees as more prone to conflict. He
uses this division between civic and ethnic nationalism to maintain
that civic nationalism is the good (Western) one, while ethnic nationalism is bad as it surfaced in the Balkans, Eastern-Central Europe, and
the former Soviet Union. Civic nationalism appears in well-institutionalized democracies. Ethnic nationalism, in contrast, arises spontaneously
when an institutional vacuum occurs. By its nature, nationalism based
on equal and universal citizenship rights within a territory depends
on a supporting framework of laws to guarantee those rights, as well
as effective institutions to allow citizens to give voice to their views.

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Ethnic nationalism, in contrast, depends not on institutions, but on

culture. Therefore, ethnic nationalism is the default option: it predominates when institutions collapse, when existing institutions do not fulfill
peoples basic needs, and when satisfactory alternative structures are not
readily available. (Snyder in Brown 1993:8-9).
The opposition used by Brown between civic and ethnic nationalism simplifies and distorts the specific practices both in Europe
and outside of Europe. Moreover, such a rigid division comes from
the vantage point of the ethno-centric Western view of itself as mainly
civic, and even civilized, in a sense that is often interpreted (again
by Westerners) as superior to other civilizations again echoed in the
theory of weak states.
Speaking against this view, and the view that only weak states
lead to internal conflict is the fact that nationalism has been unfolding
rapidly in the post-1989 world, not least in well-established, small,
affluent and strong states such as Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland
and Austria (Gingrich and Banks 2006).
Ethnicity as an explanation?
The term ethnic is used most frequently in Scandinavian languages
about non-Western people in Scandinavia. Often it is used interchangeably with difference and culture, in roughly equivalent to the
English race. Race, in turn, is not equivalent to the Scandinavian
race (same spelling different meanings) for people with different skin
complexion, language, and habits. Ethnic groups become the aural and
visible minorities (Andreassen 2005). The Scandinavian everyday use
of the term is not much different from the original Greek meaning of
non-Christians and groups of undifferentiated people outside of the
nation. The use of the concept is seen from the normative vantage
point of the nation-state. In this way asymmetric relations of power
are built into the very use of the term.
Emphasizing the minority element and the constructedness of the
ethnic as in ethnicity and ethnic conflict is not to say that ethnic
identities cannot and will not become salient in peoples motivation for
action, as John Comaroff describes it.
Once constructed and objectified, ethnic identities may take on a powerful
salience in the experience of those who bear them, often to the extent of
appearing to be natural, essential, primordial. Our task is to establish how
the reality of any identity is realized, how its essence is essentialized, how its
objective qualities come to be objectified (Comaroff 1996:166)

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It follows that ethnicity can never be a truly independent explanatory

principle. This is not to deny that action is regularly conducted in its
name or that such action has implications for everyday relations.
Studies of ethnic conflict have as I have argued paid insufficient
attention to the relational character of ethnicity, or group identity
more broadly, failing to encompass the often uneven dialectic between
the imposed and the embodied, which is crucial for understanding
identity conflicts. Instead these studies have described and analyzed
identity markers of single ethnic groups.

Muhammad cartoon conflict of 2005/6 as an ethnic conflict

After the critical discussion of the term ethnic, we can now turn
to the Danish Muhammad cartoon conflict. The crisis, as mentioned
in the beginning, is conventionally referred to as the Muhammad
crisis in Denmark. Among Muslims and some others it is known
as The Jyllands-Posten crisis, since the crisis was never about the
prophet Muhammad (mpuh). These terms suggest that the conflict is
about identity and power, respectively. Both aspects must of course
be examined in the double approach to ethnicity and identity as
suggested earlier.
Thus I approach the cartoon conflict from two dimensions:
the politicized Danish news media and the response of some media
consumers, including young Muslims. I argue that the conflict cannot
be reduced to an aspect of Muslim or ethnic identity.
In chapter two I showed that even though the identity-oriented,
Muslim-bashing discourse is dominant in Denmark, which came out
through the frame analysis as Freedom of speech as a Danish issue,
a counter-discourse, prevails and rejects the polarizing Us/Them
dichotomy. In addition, this counter-discourse blames Jyllands-Posten
and the governments anti-immigrant policy and xenophobic appearance
as the prime motor in the escalation of the cartoon conflict. I called this
discourse (sponsored primarily by the daily Politiken) Demonization
of Muslims and political spin is the issue; not freedom of speech.
A third discourse of the Danish media coverage that appeared in the
early months of 2006 is Freedom of speech; A universal human right
threatened by Islamism. This discourse saw the publication of the
cartoons as an unnecessary provocation, but later merged with the first
discourse when the sponsor, Berlingske Tidende, changed leadership
and published the bomb-in-the-turban cartoon as a show of solidarity
with the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in 2008, when a couple of North
African immigrants were caught with a plan to assassinate him (Hervik
2008, Hervik and Berg 2007, Berg and Hervik 2007).

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Freedom of speech as a Danish issue was coined by Clarissa

Berg and my self (Hervik and Berg 2007) on the basis of newspaper
articles written during the peak of the Muhammad cartoon crisis in
early 2006. This discourse had originally come out particularly strong
in an interview in Jyllands-Posten with Prime Minister, Anders Fogh
Rasmussen, on October 30 2005, which is three months prior to our
survey period. In this article the prime minister successfully launched
a political spin that transformed the issue from an internal Danish
question to a question about who understands free speech and
who does not and an insistence regardless of arguments and facts
that the cartoon affair is a question of free speech.
Earlier research (Hervik 2008, 2011) revealed an emerging
network relationship and a sharing of core values by a cluster of
radical rightwing anti-Islam writers in Denmark and North American
neo-conservatives particularly revolving around controversial Daniel
Pipes. Members of the Danish semi-secret study group, the Giordano
Bruno society and the Free Speech Society (that hold more than a
handful of members of the Danish Parliament, another handful of
journalists and communication experts, and some academics) wrote
hundreds of news articles and authored more than a dozen books on
what they saw as the dangers of Islam. Members of these networks
share the idea that Islam and the Western world are involved in a
clash of identities. Thus, the Danish Muhammad cartoon conflict was
presented as a manifestation of this clash, where Islam and Islamists
had to be met by zero-tolerance and confrontation (Hervik 2008,
2011).
According to this ideology, Muslim cultural identity is irreconcilable with Danish/Western culture. The difference in itself produces
an identity conflict between us and them, and confrontation is
regarded as the only solution.
But analytically speaking identity can be approached as
something to be imposed upon others, i.e. subject positions, or looked
at as the cultural understandings that people consider themselves
emotionally attached to (Holland et al 1998). In the case of the clash
of civilization type of ideology, the discourse is about cultural difference not how actual differences are perceived and managed. The
idea of being incompatibly different is imposed upon Muslims and
followed by various forms of confrontational talk and policies. It
does not represent the embodied values and shared understandings of
Danish Muslims. Not surprisingly, Danish Muslims do not recognize
themselves or identify with the Muslims in the news media (Hervik
2002, 2011).

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The conflict is also constructed as an ethnic conflict, when

Muslims are talked about as ethnic. But this connotation of the term
ethnic is exclusively the native Danish (emic) term that racializes and
ethnicizes Somalis, Algerians, Turks, Pakistanis, Iraqis and Iranians in
Denmark into one single Muslim or ethnic group, who are seen
as largely non-Europeans. In this usage Muslims from several continents and more than 100 different groups have in common that they
are different from the native Danes. In practice we and they are
separated by the key principle of neoracism or cultural racism: They
are recognized as different and deemed incompatible.36

Media consumers response

In 2008 I conducted some focus group interviews with younger people
undergoing higher education about the Muhammad cartoon conflict
and other issues relating to the media treatment of ethnic and religious
minorities in Denmark. I selected people assumed to be the more
tolerant, moderate, informed and educated than other people in their
age group. Most of them were in their twenties and had completed
three to six years of higher education.
Muslims are irrational, dangerous people
Most of the non-Muslim interviewees in the focus groups said that
they remembered the cartoon crisis was about free speech. However,
they also told us that their memories were re-collections that came in
retrospect. The violent global reactions were their real introduction to
the cartoon affair.
Muslim reactions around the world were seen as confirming
that Muslims are irrational, dangerous people, who are misinformed about the cartoons, Denmark, and free speech and they were
seen as suppressed by their regimes, and ignorant because they lack
democracy. Danish imams, Muslims in Denmark, Muslim society, and
Muslim cultural identity were blamed for turning the conflict global
and violent.
To start off the discussion in the focus groups, we showed a picture
of a Danish kolonihavehus, i.e., allotment gardens with cottage-type
houses, which are popular places to spend time, grow vegetables and
socialize. The small houses are often used as a key symbol of Danish
culture, but this photograph showed a little house built in Ottoman
tradition, with a small tower with the crescent at the very top.
Most participants associated the house with Islam, although Ahmed
(consultant, 28 years) explained that there was nothing explicitly
Muslim about the house and its symbols. Fatima (consultant, 31 years)

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knew of an area south of Copenhagen where she had seen several such
houses. The statements seem to indicate an awareness that the notion
of incompatibility that exists in Danish popular consciousness comes
from the massive media coverage, but is detached from knowledge of
actual presence in certain areas of Copenhagen.
Mikkel (student, 32) responded to the picture by pointing out that
logically they were not incompatible, yet his first impression is that
they were indeed incompatible.
Niklas (student, 24) has a different point of view: I think they
are logically incompatible, since we are a country that has a state
church. In this way, we still have a state and a religion that are closely
connected.
One group didnt see the co-presence of a Danish allotment garden
house as incompatible with the Ottoman-style house surrounded by
scores of Danish identity symbols, including the Danish flag and a blue
Madam Bl coffee pot, although they were quick to note that many
Danes would see it as incompatible.
With a reference to the Danish prime ministers refusal to meet with
11 ambassadors from Muslim countries in October 2005 (dealt with
earlier), Mikkel explained:
Holding a meeting was rejected. Then again there is this principle of
pragmatic politics, which analysis has shown was the dumbest thing to do,
since the Arab world puts enormous emphasis on meetings just for the sake
of meetings, even if you dont agree to anything. So like holding a meeting for
the sake of expressing goodwill.

In this quote Mikkel emphasizes the irrational character of Arabic

meeting culture even if most of the ambassadors were not Arabic.
The conflicting identities view also appeared when I interviewed
the group about the cartoon story.
Jesper

I went crazy. I was abroad. I just received a text message

from my younger brother in Damascus. WHAT? Are
we at war? (Student, 31)

Mikkel

Suddenly Anders Fogh Rasmussen began to appear in

all kinds of places. (Student, 32)

Anne

Just these pictures on the front page of all kinds of

papers. With Muslims in a circle and a huge Danish
flag on fire. (Student, 24).

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The reactions around the world caused Mikkel to reflect on the

outcome of the cartoon crisis.
Mikkel

I think of this event as a victory, if you can say that

[laughs]. Since we havent been terror-bombed []
yet. In some ways we won this conflict, because they
betrayed themselves [referring to the violent reactions
supposedly showing Muslims true character].

Anne

It wasnt as if we won or there was anything to win.

I just thought it was depressing [] They are not
like us. Their religion means something else to them.
Muhammad has an entirely different meaning for them
than Jesus has for us and we can do with him as we
please. I think one should be careful when writing
about other religions and their meanings.

Mikkel

I disagree completely.

Jesper

I completely and fundamentally disagree.

Mikkel and Jespers styles are particularly confrontational: there is no

room to be careful, tolerant, or special attention. Only zero tolerance.
Anything else is seen as giving in to pressure.
Mikkel

There was a proposal in the Arab world that the rights

to freedom from critique of religion should be incorporated into human rights. I think this once again
revealed their intentions [i.e., sneak in the backdoor
and be allowed to reproduce non-democratic activities
and beliefs].

In sum, Muslim culture and identity were seen as irrational, incompatible with Danish identity markers, and the cartoon crisis confirmed
the ongoing battle producing winners and losers.
But what about the embedded relations of power between Muslims
and the Danish newsmedia?
Muslim experiences
Three of the four Muslim interviewees were engaged in the Muhammad
cartoon story and followed it closely from the very beginning in
September 2005. They were also constantly approached about their

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assumed cultural identity and asked to distance themselves from what

terrorists did in the name of Islam and what Muslims leaders at various
levels and from various groups were saying.
Ahmed explains that since Muhammad was never the real issue,
Muslims in Denmark refer to the Muhammad cartoon crisis as the
Jyllands-Posten crisis, and continues:
As I see it the crisis started with a provocation, which then got out of hand.
Then, somehow they ended up tying the crisis to freedom of speech, which
it has nothing to do with [] The problem has never been that some nonMuslims broke Islamic laws. Muslims do not expect this. In addition it is
absurd, if Muslims should apologize to the Hindus every time they eat a cow,
right? Since we have eaten their God. It is out of proportion. [] What was
really provocative, was the text [by cultural editor Flemming Rose], where it
says you should accept being ridiculed, mocked, and insulted, simply because
you are Muslim. That means my childrenwell not that I have any, but my
children to comeand my parents should be ridiculed, mocked, and insulted,
because they have a Muslim background. Thats what I protested against
[] People in Denmark and the rest of this earth shouldnt be ridiculed
automatically because they identify themselves as Muslims. That was the
problem I had. That was the problem all Muslims had. Also, those who call
for a court case against Jyllands-Posten, they had the cartoons only as item
number 16 on their list of complaints.

Ahmed And where the entire news media cut off any sense of debate.
This is where it goes awry. It is as if we were told that this
is how we have decided to do. We have decided to ridicule,
mock and insult all of you because you are Muslims. We have
no intention of changing this. We do what we want to do.
And there was no debate. There was no discussion. When
you tried to say something the door was shut by those people
babbling about free speech.
Nadia I feel that the crisis started from this Us and Them
thinking and it wasnt so much about free speech. [...] This
was a provocation for the sake of provocation. [] What I
have done is to mentally retreat into my studies. I dont feel
like expressing my personal opinions. Only what is directly
relevant to the issues we discuss, I will say. But when I hear
comments that I think are really crass, I simply ignore them. I
feel that the way of thinking has changed so much that talking
about it feels like hitting a cushion. It does not add anything.
You feel as if it is the whole atmosphere of the society; or

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at least the atmosphere that has been blown up in the news

media.
In sum, the Muslims I interviewed and others I spoke to more informally experienced that they are being contested for their identity and
that the contestation was out of proportion. The dominant coping
strategy was withdrawal.

Conclusion
Politicians and the media are turning the relationship between Muslims
and Danish values into an identity conflict. The countrys arguably
biggest and most powerful newspaper supported by the third largest
newspaper and the two tabloids, as well as the government, turn to free
speech and use it as a means to attack the countrys Muslim minority
for its cultural identity. In political terms they are doing what they
see is necessary on the basis of a Danish society, which is considered
superior, both morally and intellectually, and to such an extent that
insult and battling are the only means to be used.
Responses from some of the more educated Muslim youths I talked
to show that they feel that an identity is being forced upon them that
they do not recognize or identify with. They see themselves as Danish,
ethnic, Muslims, and not potential terrorists.
In social science terms ethnic is always about identity and
something else, which could be seen as relations of power or as
situating the conflicts in a wider socio-political field, which includes
the state whether it is strong or it is weak. In this manner relations
between the ethnic group and the surrounding society must always be
situated properly. Politicians and the media disguise this side to their
media practice and politics, and many scholars have left it untouched.
Except for Muslim extremist and self-staged spokespersons,
Muslim voices were not salient in the media coverage. Some Muslims,
like Ahmed, claimed that Muslims tried to make their voices heard, but
were met by closed doors and no or little, access to the news media.
When the cartoon conflict exploded globally and violence erupted
in many countries, the media coverage of events in other countries was
often made from a narrow Danish angle. In the next chapter I will
look closer at how the Danish Muhammad cartoon conflict played
itself out in Egypt at a time when the Danish government asked a group
of Christians to initiate a dialogue with Egyptian religious leaders and
how the Egyptian news media covered a visit by a delegation of Danish
Christians.

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CHAPTER 4
DIALOGICAL OPPOSITION IN THE
DANISH GOVERNMENTS HANDLING OF
THE MUHAMMAD CARTOON CONFLICT
Much global media coverage and most academic treatments of the
Muhammad cartoon crisis ignored the role of the Danish government
when they sought to explain why the crisis turned global and violent. In
February 2006 violent reactions to the publication of the cartoons by
the largest Danish newspaper, Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, reached
several continents and led to the loss of at least 138 lives in cartoonrelated demonstrations in Pakistan, India, Nigeria and elsewhere.
As the global reactions escalated the Danish government found
itself in what the prime minister saw as the countrys worst foreign
policy crisis since WWII.37 Faced with this crisis the government,
supported by much of the Danish news media and the majority of
the Danish population, adopted an approach of non-dialogue with
and no apology to Muslims in Denmark. Prime Minister Anders Fogh
Rasmussen found, as mentioned earlier, no reason to talk to any of the
eleven ambassadors of Muslim countries who requested a meeting to
discuss the development of anti-Islamism in the country. More broadly,
the political debate and media attention to Muslim cultural identity
was heightened; it was negative; and it employed a simplified, mediatized world where binary forces were either good or evil, beautiful or
ugly, friendly or hostile, which again fit nicely with a clash of civilizaton
framework (Peterson 2007). Danish politicians and the news media
monitored the annoying difference of Muslim and non-Westerners
for signs that could be interpreted as lack of integration and loyalty
to national values (Hervik 2011), waiting for new opportunity to
regulated the public as well as private lives of certain minority citizens
in an attempt to combat incompatible values.
As the violent reactions worldwide continued to be given wide
media exposure, the government made several initiatives to handle the
exploding anti-Danish and anti-Western reactions around the world.
One of the initiatives taken to soften the cartoon crisis was to send

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a Christian delegation to Egypt. The delegations aim was to contact

Christian and Muslim leaders in Egypt in order to promote dialogue
and to talk down the growing discontent with the cavalier Danish and
Western attitudes towards the Muslim world. Egyptians had been able
to follow the cartoon story almost from its beginning with Al Jazeera
coverage in early October 2005 and through the Egyptian newspaper
Al-Fagrs analysis of six cartoons on 17 October. Egypt had also
become officially involved at that time, when the Egyptian ambassador
to Denmark, Mona Omar Attia, co-signed a letter calling for a meeting
with the Danish prime minister on 11 October.
This raises several inter-related questions. How can we explain
this apparent contradiction between the governments insistence on
non-dialogue with cultural minorities within Denmark while simultaneously pursuing dialogue initiatives abroad to prevent further conflict?
The introduction of dialogue as a tool of conflict management raises
further questions such as what conflict, if any, was the dialogue initiative meant to prevent? Furthermore, who were the primary actors?
The West and Islam? Denmark and the Middle East? The
current Danish government and Muslim leaders? Supporters of
non-dialogue and Muslim leaders of non-democratic countries?

Mocking and the refusal of dialogue

When Prime Minister Rasmussen, backed by politicians of the right
and left, on 22 October 2005 denied ten Muslim and one Christian
ambassador a meeting to talk about the Danish public debate on
Muslims, he argued that he could not interfere in the editorial process
of the Jyllands-Posten: Freedom of expression has a wide scope and
the Danish government has no means of influencing the press (Larsen
and Seidenfaden, 2006:329). Eight days later he added the necessity of
provocation to his denial of dialogue.
What is fundamental in this case is that enlightened and free societies make
it further than un-enlightened non-free societies, exactly because some dare
to provoke and criticize authorities, either political or religious authorities
[...] I will never accept that respect for peoples religious affiliations will lead
to restrictions on the press and its opportunity to be critical, humorous or
satirical (Svane and Maressa 2005).

While it is certainly true that the prime minister did not have a legal
right to intervene in the editorial process, he could have publicly (as
an enactment of free speech) dissociated himself from the publication,
from the content of the cartoons, from Roses explanatory text, from
Jyllands-Postens editorial of the same day, and from the general

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association of Islam with terrorism. Rasmussen did none of those.

Instead, he used his interview to endorse Jyllands-Postens position
and the act of publishing the cartoons (Berg and Hervik, 2007; Hervik,
2008). Rasmussens position reflected a dominant axiom of Danish
politics, i.e., that politicians should take an uncompromising stance
towards Islam, portraying it as the most dangerous religion (Hervik
2008), precisely as Jyllands-Posten had done with the publication of
the cartoons.
Seventeen Danish newspapers re-published one or several of
the original cartoons on 17 February 2008. The re-publication
was explained as a statement connected to the Danish Security and
Intelligence Services arrest of three North-African men for plotting
the murder of cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. This statement was either
part of the news coverage of the disclosure of a murder plot, or as
a statement against journalists not being able to express themselves
freely.

Origins of Incompatibility
Surveys have shown that enemy images may appear in countries where
the enemy is not really present. According to David Smith, anti-Jewish
feeling is largely detached from the presence of Jews within the country.
Slovakia, Romania, and Poland, for instance, show a high degree of
anti-Semitism even though these countries are virtually without any
Jews (Smith 1996). Or, to put it differently, representing the Jews as
a demonic enemy is a social construction that comes from a different
origin than the actual physical presence of Jews. Jews are perhaps
the chosen enemy, chosen projectively as evil personified, which
means they embody the anti-Semites inner demons (ibid.). Complex
historical trajectories and the explicit role of the news media and its
intimate relationship to political power come to mind. However, rather
than going into these (see Hervik 2011) I wish to emphasize that these
results show clearly the socially constructed nature of anti-Semitism
(see also Lentin 2008), which means that we need to look also at the
social constructors of anti-Semitism. What does this possibly teach us
about the origin of incompatibility? Do the assumed incompatibility
and the enemy image of Muslims come from a factual reality, such as
something Muslims say or do? Smith went on to ask:
Are these Jews pure phantasmagorical constructions? Or are they, perhaps,
distorted but still recognizable reflections of real Jews? [...] If anti-Semitism is
partly a reaction to the conduct or character of living Jews, then Jews may be
able to reform anti-Semites by self-transformation (1996: 205).

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Although Smith found that Jews one hundred years ago would discuss
this among themselves, the historical answer was clear when World
War II brought the Holocaust. Nothing the Jews did, or failed to do,
made any differenceand this answer holds a more general truth
about enemy images (ibid.).
Likewise, we can ask: Do the enemy image of Islam and Muslims
and the alleged incompatibility with Danish cultural values have
anything to do with things Muslims do or say, in Denmark or more
broadly? Obviously, anti-Islamic rhetoric directed against Muslims in
general may be inspired by terrorist acts done by people in the name
of Islam, but to take a handful of terrorists as the metonymic representation of 1.25 billion dangerous people is absurd. This is nevertheless often seen in the media and in political discourse. Likewise, acts
of terrorism done by Christians or Marxists do not similarly lead the
media to put forth enemy images of Christianity and communism.
The enemy image of Muslims in Denmark is older than the
Muhammad cartoon event. In the Danish debate even prior to 9/11 the
Danish Peoples Party declared that Islamic and Danish Christian ways
of thinking were incompatible. So did the political commentator for
Jyllands-Posten, Ralf Pittelkow, who argued that Islam in its present
form is irreconcilable with the West. Author and journalist Helle Brix
argued that Islamistsby which she means all Muslim believers
should be fought at any price. Minister for Welfare Karen Jespersen
also claims that Islam cannot exist side-by-side with Danish culture.
In these four cases Danish values and Islam are presented as incompatible. (Hervik 2011:233). As mentioned earlier, negative mediatized
image can be seen in how the terms Islam and Muslim are represented along with violence, terrorism, and political activism. Hkan
Hvitfelt found in his study that this is the case in 85 percent of the
news media articles in the early to mid-1990s (Hvitfelt 1998). The
association of Muslim/Islam with violence also occurred in the focus
groups I dealt with earlier (see also Hervik 2011).
We therefore need to look at the enemy image from the perspective
of the producers of negatively described out-group more than we have
done previously. Action towards Muslims is already taking place before
they are encountered in person, or vicariously in the news media, as
it embeds a performativity of politics that is not constituted by what
the Muslim is actually doing. Maybe Smith is right when he argues
that the enemy image of Jews is better understood as a figment of
social imaginations that supposedly sees the enemy as evil personified
(1996). We can certainly rewrite Smiths use of Rosenberg by saying
that a researcher looking for an objective basis for islamophobia in

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the traits of the Muslims is like a police officer, who solves the crime
by arresting the corpse.38 In other words, if you want to understand
anti-Semites, you should analyze the anti-Semites, not the Jews (Smith
1996). We need to look at the inner demons of this group and find the
source of their supporters and their continuous production of antagonistic relationships (ibid.). Elsewhere I have shown how the domestic
opponents figured as traitors and cowards who were accused of
not standing up for freedom of speech when Denmark needed it, and
who pursued a lax immigrant policy, allowing a stream of migrants
to flow into Denmark (Boe and Hervik 2008). This chapter argues that
the zero-tolerance strategy towards Muslims tells us more about its
producers and sponsors than about the actual relationship between
the categories West and Islam. I will analyze the transnational,
cross-Atlantic network of anti-Islamism, which makes us able to better
understand the idea of cultural incompatibility.
In the Danish media coverage of the cartoon crisisparticularly
in the frame Freedom of speech as a Danish freedom (see chapter
two), Muslims or Islamists respectively are treated as the enemy to
be contained, while at the same time national identity is being built
through this enemy imagery. As I pointed out earlier, about 80 percent
of the Danish voters see the relationship between native Danish and
Muslims as incompatible (Hervik 2004). This enemy is needed for
the construction of Danish national identity, a project that has been
emerging in Denmark since the mid-1990s. In this period a number
of studies have demonstrated a rigid dichotomization between the
morally superior Danes (with free speech, for instance) and Others,
non-Westerners and particularly Muslims, who do not have free speech
and whose static, unevolving culture is hundreds of years behind.
This view is present in Jyllands-Postens editorial on 30 September
2005. I showed that this was also present in the editorials throughout
the summer of 2001 (Chapter one and Hervik 2011). Within this
dichotomization it has become legitimate to treat newly arriving
immigrants as different from native Danes (Holm 2007; HvenegaardLassen 2002).
Both Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss have stressed, liberal democracies
are weak because they rest on the willingness to compromise. In the
Freedom of speech as a Danish freedom frame including the Danish
prime ministers rejection of a meeting with the eleven ambassadors of
Muslim countries, compromising was not a possibility; zero tolerance
was the only solution. Therefore one can argue that to refuse to
meet with the ambassadors is not a blunder from a neoconservative
perspective, but part of a fight to beat the opponent. An apology (or

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dialogue) is also not an option. When the prime minister brought an

apology in an interview on 30 January 2006 on Arabic television, most
Danish commentors immediately interpreted is as a pseudo-apology.
The prime minister did not explicitly respond to the ambassadors
request for an urgent meeting, but explained that acts or expressions of a blasphemous or discriminatory nature could be brought to
court. At the same time, he wrote about dialogue of a different order:
I share your view that dialogue between cultures and religions needs to
be based on mutual respect and understanding. There is indeed room for
increasing mutual understanding between different cultures and religions. In
this regard, I have personally taken the initiative to enter into a dialogue with
representations from the Muslims communities in Denmark.
Furthermore, I would like to see the dialogue between Denmark and the
Muslim world strengthened. Indeed, one of the principal objectives of the
initiative Partnership for Progress and Reform, launched by the Danish
Government in 2003, is to stimulate the dialogue between Denmark, the EU
and countries in North Africa and the Middle East (Rasmussen in Larsen and
Seidenfaden 2007: 329).

This raises the issue of what goes into dialogue at the various levels. Is
dialogue an opportunity for a discussion, where one can convince the
opponent with rational arguments? Or, is dialogue the winners way of
consoling the looser?

Vicarious Dialogue in Egypt

In early February 2006 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Per Stig Mller
asked the Danish Mission Council for advice on what initiatives
could be taken to lessen tensions in the Arab and Muslim world. The
Council was already receiving state funds for projects relating to the
collaboration between Christian-Muslim dialogue groups in Egypt
and in Denmark. To meet the request the Mission Council asked its
collaborator in Cairo, CEOSS (Coptic Evangelical Organization for
Social Services), for suggestions about what the Council could do to
contribute to a diminishing of violence in the Middle East. Within a few
days the Secretariat granted funds from the Partnership for Progress
and Reform (Det arabiske initiativ)39 to send a high-level Protestant
Church delegation to Egypt. From 16 to 19 February, six Christian
leaders (male) traveled to Egypt and met with Christian (Coptic) and
Muslim leaders, and politicians. Their task was to clarify the situation
in Denmark and continue the already existing dialogue meetings with
groups in Egypt. According to the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

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The main objective of the Partnership is to establish the basis for a strengthened
dialogue with countries in the wider Middle East regionfrom Morocco
in the west to Iran in the east. The dialogue should be based on common
values that have formed our relations through more than two millennia. After
the enlargement of the European Union, the role of the Mediterranean and
the Middle East is in focus as regions to which Europe should build closer
relations. (2003)

The Partnership illustrates a connection between combating terror,

development aid and national security that has emerged in Denmark
since the late 1990s. The logic is that through the promotion of
dialogue and democracy terrorist recruitment of poor and relatively
deprived people will diminish.
The Government will use these funds in a targeted way to counteract the
threats caused by the increasing gap between particularly the Western world
and the Arab world, including the launch of special activities to combat the
underlying causes of terrorism and for activities to promote modernization
and democratization in the Arab countries. (Danish Ministry of Foreign
Affairs 2003)

CEOSS, meanwhile, had been in defensive and apologetic mode since

the previous October (2005). Coptic leaders had allowed Coptic
students to give Muslim students a CD as a Ramadan gift. The CD
contain a theatre play recorded two years earlier called I was blind but
now I see which was meant as a statement against religious extremism
and radicalism. In the play a Coptic student was lured by money into
converting to Islam. Once converted the local sheikh urged him to kill
priests and burn churches. Eventually the student abandoned Islam
and returned to Christianity. Enraged Islamists then sought to kill him,
but a faithful Muslim friend saved him. A journalist from the tabloid
newspaper Al-Midan got hold of the CD and wrote a story about it
that was published on 14 October 2005. Riots quickly broke out in
Alexandria and caused several casualties as well as damage to cars,
church property, Coptic businesses, windows and furniture (Croucher
2005). Teaming up with the Danish Christians was thus also a chance
for CEOSS to patch up its image and divert attention from the unfortunate gift-giving incident.
The delegation did not represent the Danish government or
Jyllands-Posten, but did work out a message to be delivered at all
meetings in Egypt that included Jyllands-Postens apology translated into Arabic and a statement by the prime minister saying that
he wouldnt express himself in such a way that it may offend other

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peoples religious feelings. The message included a set of factual statements about Danish democracy. According to the Councils report,
two statements were particularly important: first, that the religious
delegation traveled without a political mandate or message from
the Danish government, and second, that Christian Danes also felt
offended by the cartoons (Danish Mission Council 2006).
The delegations visit was closely followed by the Danish, Egyptian,
and international press, but was quickly taken off the agenda once the
delegation had left Egypt.

Egyptian media coverage

In CEOSSs sample of media coverage, at least nine Egyptian dailies
covered the visit (Al Ahram, Al Akhbar, El Gamhoria, Al Mesaa,
Egypt Revival, Egyptian Today, Rosa-Al-Youseef, Arabian, and El
Mosawar). Five Egyptian televisions stations, numerous Egyptian
news Web sites, and many Middle Eastern newspapers also published
substantial coverage.
Headlines of the visit were fairly uniform: Danish church
delegates support Muslims, Copenhagens bishop in Egypt to
apologize for the insulting drawings of Islam, Danish Christian
delegates in Cairo decrease the impact of the cartoon crisis, Danish
church delegates apologize today, Denmarks church delegates
discuss with Al-Azhar Sheikh (Tantawi) about calming down Islamic
emotions, Copenhagen doesnt suffer from Islamophobia,
Danish Christian delegates condemn the drawings, and Danish
priests apologized to Al-Azhar Sheikh. The uniformity of the
headline indicates that the message of the delegation was clear and
understood by the Egyptian media.
The International Committee for the Support of the Final Prophet
(ICSFP) headlined its story Danish Vice-President of the Parliament
[Niels Helweg Petersen] assures that Muslims are being exposed to
attacks:
In Egypt the Christian Danish delegates try to abate the impact that is
happening in the Islamic street because of the insulting of the prophet (pbuh)
the delegation included a number of the religious leaders led by the Bishop
of Copenhagen, Karsten Nissen. He said this visit is taken place because we
want as Christians to express that we feel humiliated about what happened,
and we identify with the Islamic world because of the drawings. That is
why we came to show our respect to the Muslims who wish to continue a
dialogue with us. The bishop made it clear that this visit is not formal, and it
does NOT represent the Danish government or the newspapers that insulted
the Muslims. He stressed that this visit is organized through cooperation

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between the Churches of Denmark and the Egyptian embassy in

Copenhagen. (Why Muhammad.com 2006; emphasis original).

For ICSFP it is clear that the Danish Christian delegations apology is
not the same as that of the Danish government. Nissens core message,
shown in the above quote, was repeated by most newspapers: Danish
Christians also feel humiliated; they show respect to Muslims; they
offer an apology; and they disassociate themselves from the drawings.
Thus, Al Mesaas headline read Copenhagen bishop: We respect
the Islamic religion. The news article goes on to say: We refuse
the insult against the prophet. We felt humiliated by the insulting
drawings [] and demonstrated against them in our country
(Al-Mesaa 17 February 2006).
Almasry Alyom added:
The protestant Bishop Karsten Nissen said that the aim of the visit is to
emphasize that the Danish people does not hate Muslims and that Christians
want to live in peace with Muslims in their country and the rest of the world.
Moreover, the two religious groups can live together and prove that the clash
of civilization theory does not exist between the Islamic and the Christian
world (Almasry Alyom 18 February 2006).

Under the headline Dialogue between Al-Azhar sheikh and Danish

priests, BBCs Arabic-language website wrote:
Danish Bishop: it is impossible for Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen
to apologize for what was published by Jyllands-Posten. [] I clarified for
Tantawi [Al-Azhar sheikh] that the newspaper apologized for the drawings
but our Prime Minister cannot apologize for something he did not do, because
he is not the editor of the newspaper (BBC Arabic Website 2006)

Several news media outlets reflected on the apology issue. Nahthat

Masr noted that the Danish church delegates announced their
innocence of involvement in the drawings, but nevertheless offered
an official apology in Cairo and described the drawings as a childish
behavior. They also explained that freedom of speech does not mean
publishing whatever you want. Rather, they emphasized that freedom
of speech must be exerted in a responsible manner and not used as
ignorantly and foolishly as it was by Jyllands-Posten (Nahthat Masr
18 February 2006).
Roz Al-Youssef noted that various political representatives apologized for the insults of the prophet. An article on 15 February 2006
under the title: Delegation from Danish churches [visits Cairo] to

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show support for Muslims. Norwegian government apologizes for the

insulting of the prophet went on:
The Norwegian government apologized again for the republishing of the
insulting drawings of the prophet by the Magazinet newspaper [on 10
January 2006]. Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jonas Gahr Store emphasized
that his government denounces any act that deliberately segregates people or
hurts anyone [] European Union Representative Javier Solana apologized
for the insult to the prophet (pbuh) and expressed the EUs resentment of the
caricatures. He called for a speedy end to the crisis [] And on the other
hand a delegation representing the Danish churches headed by Copenhagens
bishop Karsten Nissen will arrive in Cairo tomorrow on a special visit to meet
Alazhar Sheikh, Minister of Alawqaf40 and Egypts highest mufti, in order to
declare the Danish churches support to the Muslim crowds in denouncing
the caricature drawings that hurt their [Muslim] feelings (Roz Al-Youssef 15
February 2006).

The European Union apologized for the drawings and so did the
Norwegian government, while the Danish government maintained its
line of no dialogue, no apology.
Masr Alarabiya also reported on Solanas apology, on the eve of the
delegations visit in an article headlined: After Solanas Apology to
Al-Azhar sheikh, a delegation from the Danish churches visits Cairo:
Javier Solana, High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security
Policy and Secretary-General of the Council of the European Union,
apologized to Al-Azhar sheikh doctor Muhammad Sayed Tantawi for the
insults to the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) published by a Danish newspaper.
Tantawi assured Solana that the Islamic centers in Britain, Austria, Germany
and the USA do not suffer from a clash of civilizations. Tantawi also insisted
that on the dialogue of civilizations and the dialogue of religions, but said
that the problem is that there are those [non-Muslims] who understand the
goodness of Islam but use this insight to insult Islam in the name of freedom
of speech (Masr Alarabiya 15 February 2006).

The Masr Alarabiya article describes (but doesnt analyze) the apology
of Javier Solana and thereby alludes to the non-apologizing Danish
prime minister. The questions that seem to appear for the Egyptian
media and its readers are: Can the Danish Christian delegates apologize
for something they did not do? And if Javier Solana found it appropriate to apologize, then why doesnt the Danish Prime Minister do the
same, since he obviously know the drawings insulted many Muslims
and Christians?

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An article Alahrams Islamic-Christian agreement on criminalization of insults to sanctities reports agreement between Tantawi and
the Danish delegates about promoting international law to provide
some legal protection of religion, the prophets, and sacred religious
places.
Al-Azhar sheikh, the great imam doctor Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, called
on international institutions to quickly issue a law that criminalizes insults
against religion, sanctities, and prophets, and to define punishments for
countries that violate this law [...] pointing out that the problem between
Denmark and the Islamic world will not be solved without issuing such a
law [...] Tantawi said that they agreed that expressing Islamic anger through
violent acts such as burning and destroying buildings are unacceptable. The
delegates emphasized to Tantawi that the Danish law criminalizes insulting
sanctums and that the case of the newspaper that published the caricature
drawings is being tried in the Danish legal system (Alahram 19 February
2006).41

After the delegation had returned to Denmark, Alakhbar newspaper

summarized the results of the delegations visit to Egypt. A visit that
also included talks with Head of the Presidential Office for Political
Affairs, Osama Albaz. The visit included three important points:
1) The delegates came to apologize for the harm caused to the
Muslims by a small number of Danish people.
2) There is a hidden agenda [Al-Yad Al-Khafiyalit. the
invisible hand; 42 Arabic speakers would recognized this as
an indirect evocation of a Western, American and Zionists
conspiracy against the Arabic world behind this issue, set
up by some person or group who wants to cause trouble to
the relationship between the Danish people and the Muslim
world.
3) Dialogue, and the continuation of the dialogue, is the only
way to overcome the dilemma and its repercussions (Alakhbar
23 February 2006).
All of the nine newspapers we looked at emphasized that the Christian
delegations visit was a wish for dialogue with the Muslim Al-Azhar
scholars. The delegates are described as respectful and praised for
being sympathetic with the humiliation of Muslims and their feelings
triggered by the cartoons.
Most of the newspapers emphasize the importance of differentiating the Danish government from the Danish Christian delegation;

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that the priests of Denmark felt humiliated because of the cartoons;

and that the priests of Denmark apologized to the Al-Azhar sheikh.
The Christian delegations apology and wish to continue a dialogue is
recognized and accepted by the Muslim scholars as also coming from
some of the Danish people, which confirms the political rather than
national nature of the way the cartoon crisis was perceived in Egypt.
The Danish government and Jyllands-Posten, rather than the Danish
people as such, are accused of being disrespectful of the person of the
prophet Muhammad. This news media coverage reveals the split in
Danish reactions to the cartoon issue in terms of whether dialogue
should be pursued. One reaction was to recognize the offending nature
of the cartoons, actively pursue a genuine dialogue, and offer an
apology. The other response was to reject the offending nature of the
cartoons; to refuse dialogue; and to insist on not apologizing.

Staged Dialogue
Throughout the Egyptian news coverage al-hiwar, dialogue, is
a concept used to describe the objective of the visiting Christian
delegation. Dialogue is sometimes mistakenly used in English for the
Arabic niqash. Niqash refers more to a discussion and differs from
hiwar-dialogue in the way that each concept carries different assumptions about the interlocutor. The concept of dialogue in the Arabic
language hiwar derives from the root verb hawara, which means the
rewinding of words, i.e., reviewing the logic and the expression used
in addressing someone. Hiwar-dialogue is linked to the concept of
consultation mushawara, which stresses that for dialogue to take
place there must be acceptance of consultation about some issue
(Alzubaidy 1969:108).
Dialogue in the Arabic implies that people involved shall present
points of view or evidence to support of their opinion, unconstrained,
respectfully, and in complete freedom, so that the dialogue partners
can reach to a solution to a specific problem or make a subject matter
clearer through the exchanges of questions and answers. In this manner
hiwar/dialogue is a shared consultation.
According to the Arabic dictionary authored by Taj Al-Roos,
the art of dialogue has rules and regularities that must be followed
in order to keep dialogue from turning doubtful or indisputable. All
parties involved in the dialogue must know the subject of the dialogue;
admit being faulty in the case if proved being incorrect; use polite
words and act politely; respect the faith/belief of the other and his/
her principles; aiming to reach the truth and achieve rightful justice;
restrain themselves from becoming angry; be moderate until the

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dialogue is finished; have the ability/freedom to express their opinions;

be flexible and must avoid stiffening; listen to all the parties involved
in the dialogue; and one must stop him/herself from controversy; and
understand and listen to the speaker in order to become understanding
and forgiving (Alzubaidy 1969).
Philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin has argued similarly with regard to
the attributes of dialogue. He argued: When dialogue ends, everything ends [] A single voice ends nothing and resolves nothing. Two
voices is the minimum for life, the minimum for existence. He wrote
this in 1929 (Emerson 1984: 363). Bakhtin argued that absolute truth
must be rejected, since it speaks in a single voice. No statement or
position can ideally exist without entering into dialogue. Accordingly,
no participant in a dialogue has a privileged position. Nor can one
arrive at a solution before engaging in a dialogue. Bakhtins argument
implicitly embraces the idea of recognition of the interlocutors.
The struggle for recognition is developed further by Alex Honneth
(1996),43 who argues that lack of recognition or misrecognition at
various levels will create social pathologies and cause social conflicts.
(See also Fraser and Honneth, 2003, Taylor, 1994).
Mutual recognition is inherent also in the concept of dialogue
in conflict prevention, management and transformation. Thus, the
Swedish research organization Folke Bernadotte Academy (2007) which works to enhance the quality of international crisis and conflict
prevention by, for instance, improving the skills of the facilitator
in sustaining a constructive dialogue process - defined dialogue as
voluntary processes where multiple stakeholders to a conflict aim at
reaching a mutually satisfactory agreement with the assistance of an
outsider facilitator or mediator. The idea being that the dialogue will
alter the shared awareness, so that it reaches a higher level of understanding, where conflicts can be prevented and resolved.
In a true dialogue relation there must be mutual recognition of the
interlocutors; no interlocutor can have a privileged position, and the
outcome of the dialogue cannot be given beforehand. Dialogue requires
presence, where dialogue partners can sit face-to-face explaining what
is at stake on their side (Vindelv in Mandagmorgen 27 February
2006: 26). Even if there can be no privileged position, we enter into
dialogue from a certain position and with the idea of using dialogue
for a certain purpose. Dialogue will never take place in a power-free
space. Knowledge of the specific circumstances, preconditions, and
perspectives are necessary (Andersen, Hansen, and Sinclair 2006).44
Andersen, Hansen, and Sinclair have analyzed the Danish
governments initiative in the Middle East and North Africa,

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Partnership for Progress and Reform (Det arabiske initiativ), the

program used to fund the Christian delegation to Egypt in February
2006. They criticize the Danish government for not establishing a
specific foundation for the dialogue and instead basing the Partnerships
dialogue talk on an abstract identification of differences to be bridged.
Despite its rhetorical wish to meet locally expressed needs in the
Middle East, the Partnership programs agenda is distinctly Danish.
The cartoon case is even an example showing that Denmark in reality
did not want the dialogue, since the opponents points of view could
not be recognized, and since entering into dialogue was perceived as
giving in on ones own values (2006). But, as Vibeke Vindelv has
pointed out, this shows the Danish prime minister has not understood
the meaning of dialogue. Entering into dialogue does not mean giving
up the democratic ideals refined over hundreds of years. It is possible
to defend democratic ideals while acknowledging that the cartoons
offend Muslims and others, and to understand that denying dialogue
is a lack of recognition which fuels outrage and dramatic reactions
(Vindelv in Mandagmorgen, 27 February 2006). Andersen, Hansen
and Sinclair also argue that by failing to recognize any differing views
on free speech, the Danish government may have fuelled the escalation
of the cartoon crisis.

Conclusion
We can now turn back to the question posed in the beginning: Is there
a contradiction between the negative dialogue employed toward the
ambassadors and offended Muslims in Denmark, and the staging of
dialogue in Egypt?
Many members of ethnic minorities feel unrecognized in Denmark
today. They experience discrimination, marginalization, and exclusion.
Unable to obtain a true dialogue with the Danish government about
the growing anti-Islamism in Denmark, including the publication of
the cartoons, cultural editor Roses explanatory article, and JyllandsPostens editorial of 30 September 2005, Muslim organizations and
ambassadors turned to their government for consultations. The lack
of recognition in Denmark then eventually led to violent reactions in
most corners of the world as radical Danish imams played with fire
that got out of hand.
The dramatic escalation of the reactions forced the Danish
government and the EU to react. In one of several responses the Danish
government sponsored a Christian delegation to go to the Middle East
to initiate a dialogue, which it hoped could help smother the violence.
That the government did not wish to enter a true dialogue on its own

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is supported by the unclear picture of which parts of which conflict the

dialogue was supposed to help resolve. Government politicians made
frequent references to the clash of civilizations narrative, which
suggests they had in mind abstract and essentialized notions of Islam
vs. West rather like George Lakoff reminding us of what to think
of when he says: Dont think of an elephant. For these politicians,
true dialogue with Muslims is not on the agenda, at least while the
Danish government maintains the policy of keeping Muslims out of
Denmark. That the government does not seriously want dialogue is
supported by Andersen, Hansen, and Sinclairs argument that the
Partnership Program for Reform and Progress (the body that funded
the Christian delegation to Egypt) is too much of a one position, one
truth approach, where the political idea is to diminish the chances of
terrorist recruitment among the deprived poor by supporting various
dialogue projects in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Dialogue
seems to end up falling back on the neoconservative premise that
our democratic values are superior to theirs and Huntingtons
view of the clash of civilization is chosen rather than dialogue of
civilizations (Andersen et al. 2006:5).
In the Middle Eastern news media, politicians and Muslims
leaders who all have their own perspectives, interests, and points
of view clearly differentiate between the Church delegation and the
Danish government. The delegation identified with the humiliation
felt by religious brothers and recognize the benefits of continuous true
dialogue between Christians and Muslims. The inter-faith dialogue
does not take place between Christian and Muslim representatives simply talking about clashes between Christians and Muslims,
although that often leads to joint action. Rather, the two groups talk
based on the premise of being much more alike than differentabout
shared concerns such as radicalized vs. peacefully oriented believers,
ignorance of the holy books, and simplistic media coverage of religious
issues. The Danish government, on the other hand, does not live up to
the criteria of hiwar/dialogue, i.e., admitting to having been at fault in
not recognizing the offending nature of the cartoons and for refusing
to talk to the eleven ambassadors in October 2005.
By failing to distance itself from (and in fact endorsing) JyllandsPostens project, the government accepts the popular association of
Islam with terrorism, as seen in Kurt Westergaards bomb-and-creedin-the-turban cartoon, which makes dialogue virtually impossible in
any sense of the term. Instead, the government is forced to rely on
someone else to do the dialogue for them.

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The Danish government stand fairly firm on the negative dialogue

position, although it vicariously tries to calm down tensions in Egypt
and the Middle East by sending a group of dialogue-oriented Christian
delegates. In accordance with the neoconservative philosophy it
maintained the negative dialogue as a political strategy.
In the beginning I also argued that the social constructors of the
idea of incompatibility and negative dialogue should be examined.
Claims about the incompatibility of Danish and Muslim societies
and ways of living did not start with the Danish newspaper JyllandsPostens publication of the cartoons. But the debate following from it
lead only to more entrenched and uncompromising positions that used
other incompatible bipolar division of absolutes such as democracy
and enemies of democracy, free speech and enemies of free
speech. In Denmark politicians continue to vie for stricter zerotolerance measures, such as banning the headscarf from more and
more places (although so far not from sidewalks), to solve social
problems. In popular consciousness Muslim ways of living are increasingly seen as provocative and creating fissures in Danish society and
therefore often meet with confrontation.
Yet the ideas that there can be no moral equivalency, that our
system is morally superior, and that the public sphere is not for
dialogue but an area for serious battling and confrontation do not
come from Samuel Huntingtons formulation of the clash of civilizations scheme itself and are not directed at the relationship between
the West and Islam as cultural or civilizational entities. These
three ideas are general principles applied to any political relationship;
the West and Islam clash being one instance of application. The
foundation of Samuel Huntingtons idea of clashing identity values
resembled Carl Schmitts idea that that we dont know who we are,
until we know our enemies, and once we know them, we need to
overcome them. The idea of treating your political opponent as a foe or
friend comes from Schmitt (and is practiced by Strauss) in the furious
critique of the overly democratic and weak Weimar Republic, which so
strongly shaped both mens academic approach to the concept of the
political. Schmitt, to the best of my knowledge, did not deal with the
incompatibility of the West with Islam. Huntington, and many
others with him, have applied it, and enhanced this dichotomization
to the relationship between the West, Islam, China and other
civilizations. But the idea of incompatibility, treating opponents as
friends, or foes, is not restricted to clashes of civilizations, but comes
out in strong criticism of multiculturalists, liberals, relativists, cosmopolitans and so, who are often seen as cowards and traitors (Boe and

99

Hervik 2008). The incompatibility of values narrative and the practice

of negative dialogue is an ideology not constrained to the clash of
civilization narrative, but are also in play within religious, cultural,
social and other social spheres.

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EPILOGUE
In the years following the cartoon crisis events appeared with uncompromising belief in free speech with little attention to the social responsibility of using of free speech, such as using the right to insult others
may not be the most favorable means to create a positive, relationship
with other citizens. On 20 May 2010 the first Draw Muhammad
Day took place as an initiative of a Seattle cartoonist, Molly Norris.
It followed threats against two cartoonists who depicted Muhammad
negatively in an episode of the American animated series South Park.
The original idea was to hold a competition to draw Muhammad,
which could generate so many drawings that from of speech could
be successfully defended and the threats watered out. This Draw
Muhammad activism has resulted in thousands of insulting cartoons
on the net, originally aimed at a few radical Muslims, who sent
death threats, but also offending millions of peaceful minded Muslim
believers. Thus, in spite of the well-intended initiative this activism
leads to further polarization and nourishing Muslim sentiments of not
being respected by Westerners.
In light of the belief that the Muhammad cartoon story is a story
about free speech and free speech must be defended regardless without
concerns, it is interesting to realize that communication experts and
others advice against using any form of association with the original
Muhammad cartoon story. This is the conclusion that came out particularly clear in May of 2010 four and a half years of the original
publication of the 12 cartoons - when Finlands largest newspaper,
Helsingin Sanomat, published a controversial Fingerpori cartoon.
The Fingerpori cartoon of a Nazi soldier happily finding a
package of soap labeled free-range Jews (Vapaan Juutalaisen
Saippua) created much concern in Finland. The shocking scene in the
cartoon was set in Berlin 1943 but spoke to a contemporary public
debate about choosing eggs from free-ranging or battery hens. It was
withdrawn from the Helsingin Sanomat website and met with an
apology by popular cartoonist Pertti Jarla; later a cartoonist about the
original cartoon was published; and yet most interestingly the Editorin-Chief, Reeta Merilinen, responded to an invitation by well known
and respected Finnish blog, Instant Kaamos.

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There was something odd about Jarlas cartoon. If we follow the

logic of such a cartoon, we would strongly expect that an anti-Semitic
Nazi soldier would choose a Jew-free soap, but he chooses the
ethically correct product based on free-ranging Jews. Like chickens,
Jews (in soap) must have had a good life to make the product attractive.
Obviously, the chicken Jew analogy puts readers at awe, but at the
same time, we could ask, if the scene itself overshadows the irony and
whether one should take the cartoon at face value? The cartoon may
be distasteful and testing the limits, but the irony is undisputable.
We learned from research on the Danish Muhammad cartoon crisis
that actual publication of the 12 infamous cartoons was less controversial and confrontational than the stories about the cartoons and
stories about stories about the cartoons (Hervik 2011, Hervik and
Berg 2007). Had the Danish prime minister met in October 2005 with
ambassadors who were concerned with the general development in the
Danish news media and politics in Denmark instead of insisting on a
zero-tolerance strategy and a political spin transformation to maintain
that the story was all about free speech, two politicizing Muslim
delegations would not have traveled to the Middle East to fertilize
the global and at time violent response to the cartoons, to the largest
Danish newspaper, Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten and the government.
Stories about the cartoons are indeed important.
There were at least three stories in play in the Fingerpori cartoon
case of 3 May 2010. What immediately struck as unusual was that
the Editor-in-Chief of Finlands largest newspaper decided to respond
to a blogger. Helsinkin Sanomat editors and communications experts
knew they should be careful about commenting on blogs, which are by
definition subjective, risky business, albeit to various degrees. The risk
of adding insult to members of the target group is large. When leading
journalists and politicians do communicate on blogs of others, there
is a good chance that something crucial is at stake. Just prior to the
Fingerpori incident, the Facebook organization closed the Facebook
group Draw Muhammad Day. Not that initiators couldnt bypass
the removal or that it was opened again soon, but they shut it down
in order to communicate a solid statement that served to disassociate itself from being associated with the negative image following
the Danish Muhammad cartoons. Regardless of ones interpretation,
any association with such cartoons is handled as a case of negative
publicity. Once you, in any way, are associated with the Muhammad
cartoons as racist and violent global reactions by offended and angry
people of Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindi and other backgrounds,
it is difficult to dismantle this powerful negative image. Accordingly,

102

it is necessary to act pro-actively to improve ones public relations

image, which is precisely what the Helsinkin Sanomats Editor-inChief attempted to do in her response to a blogger. When faced with
the potential negative influence of the blog, the newspaper found
itself in a lose-lose situation; either Helsinkin Sanomat apologizes and
seeks to withdraw the mentioned cartoons. Thereby, the controversy
surrounding the cartoon would ultimately be legitimized. Or, on the
other hand, the Finnish newspaper may choose to label any critical
interpretations as misunderstandings. This would potentially connote
the acceptance of impending racism within their newspaper. Ultimately,
she offered guarantees of the good moral basis and democratic nature
of Helsinkin Sanomat and distanced herself from the cartoonist,
who was listed as being sole responsible for the cartoon. It should be
added that even in Denmark, beneath the high-octane political verbal
tone, communication experts, teachers, corporations and others seek
to avoid being associated with the negative imaged resulting from
the Muhammad cartoon crisis and its aftermath. Not so much for
reasons of censorship but to avoid negative associations and having
to wrestle with the stigmatizing image of being a discriminator, racist,
Islamophobe, or anything in the vicinity of such.
A second story about the free-range Jew soap cartoon came from
the blog, which Helsinkin Sanomat was responding to. The blog,
Instant Kaamos, wrote an inquiry and invitation to publish the
answer on the blog, in which they framed the story as Holocaust
humour and generally associated it with the Holocaust: ridiculing
and insulting the victims of the Nazi Holocaust, trivialize genocide
and accompanying it with a mild threat about the potential detrimental consequences for Finlands image in Europe. Like in the Danish
case, this wording was characterized as aggressive and appealing to
a moral panic that exceeded the original ironic cartoons. Did any
Holocaust survivor or relatives express that they were offended, or is
Instant Kaamos speaking on their behalf? There are plenty of cartoons
dealing with the Holocaust and other atrocities around the world,
as people in Israel, for instance, reminded us during the Muhammad
cartoon discussions. The treatment of Jews in the last 100 years has
taught us to be sensitive and careful about anti-Semitic popular and
academic literature. When Instant Kaamas framed the issue so strongly
as a Holocaust issue, where irony became trivializing, then Helsinkin
Sanomat had to respond and trivialize the Fingerpori cartoon as well
as making sure everyone remembers Helsinkin Sanomat as being a
newspaper for democracy and human dignity.

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However, the focal point of the cartoon is not really Berlin, Jews,
or Nazis during WWII. There were previous instances of non-controversial Fingerpori uses of the Nazi metaphor that did not generate
much response. Perhaps, the new cartoon was rather an issue about
choosing ethically and politically correct eggs and other produce,
onto which the cartoonist wished to add his satirical perspective by
investing the issue with a perspective from the Nazi era that adds
insult, mocking, and ridicule to people to whom such choices matters.
In another blog the analogue was not so much Jews and chickens, but
Nazis and modern leftists (such as obesity warriors and greenies)
(Tongue Tied 2010). Such a comparison would not go unnoted in
the Danish debate, which is noted for being very confrontational and
aggressive. Did modern left-wingers complain about the cartoons?
Who are speaking on their behalf? Or, rather, and, this is my third
perspective, who did this bloggers mocking of the left-wingers
represent?
The argumentative strategy to evoke Nazism for the purpose of
mocking left-wingers has been all over the debate on the Muhammad
cartoons in Denmark. Left-wingers were seen as cowards, who did not
stand up for free speech, and traitors, for failing to conduct a restrictive
identity politics towards non-Western immigrants, especially Muslims
in order to halt immigration (Boe and Hervik 2008). Whereas the first
two perspectives mentioned in this short commentary did not make
direct references to the Muhammad cartoon story, the third perspective
did in the shape of radical right bloggers. Radical right Australian,
John Rays Tongue Tied (referred to above), and the Tundra Tabloids
are two such cases. Tundra Tabloids begins its story:
The Finnish capitals newspaper, the Helsinki Sanomat, refused to print the
dreaded Danish cartoons of Mohamed when the storm surrounding them
first erupted, regardless of the well documented reasons as to why they
were published by the Jyllands-Posten in the first place, buthad no problem
whatsoever publishing the above cartoon by Pertti Jarla in his Fingerpori
comic strip (original emphasis) (Tundra Tabloids 2010)

There were precisely no well-documented reasons to publish the

Muhammad cartoons and they were according to cultural editor,
Flemming Rose, and Editor-in-Chief, Carsten Juste, not showing
evidence of self-censorship. Instead, the published cartoons, the accompanying text by Rose, and the editorial, all of 30 September 2005,
make clear the intention was to ridicule and insult Muslims for being
Muslims. Again such stories of the cartoons are important. Today, we
know that a strong core group in a radical right network that encom-

104

passed North-American neo-conservatives and neo-conservatives in

other European countries dominated the news media coverage and
form a discourse of confrontation and insistence on seeing the issue
as an issue of free speech between countries, who has free speech
and those who dont (Hervik 2008, 2011). Part of this epistemic
community is also Tundra Tabloids and to some extent the blog,
Tongue Tied, which is quick to establish that left-wingers have allied
themselves with Islamism against Us. Moreover Tundra Tabloids
brings interview with Lars Vilk, who produced and still produces
his own cartoon controversy, and a link Urgent, Help Geert Now
and additional links that can help Dutch radical right populist, Geert
Wilders, who needs no introduction. The Danish neo-conservatives
and their related sympathizers are organized in various ways, most
clearly in the Free Speech Society and its tentacles of other websites
and blogs. With money originating from Jyllands-Posten foundation
among others, this society gave free speech prices to cultural editor,
Flemming Rose, cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, and to neo-Conservative, Daniel Pipes. Lars Vilk is also a friend of the society.
Comparing these three perspectives propel interesting questions for
an elaborate study. The public relations-aspect builds on an intention
of not being associated with the negative Muhammad cartoon story,
while the third perspective follows these cartoons as an important
and necessary anti-Muslim manifestation. The second perspective has
the Muhammad cartoons as a backdrop in the wordings used and
something that is on the public sensitivity agenda since the Muhammad
cartoon story took place, but here the blog expands its application
from the anti-Muslim and radical Muslim agenda to the Jewish and
anti-Semitic.
At this time we should be reminded about Tariq Modoods
argument that the reason Muslim minorities do not receive the same
positive and sensitive treatment as the Jews in the Western news media:
Muslims are lumped into a single monolithic category and representing
oppressors, which makes it impossible to be sympathetic to Muslims
as objects of racism (Modood 2006).
In light of these three perspectives, let us consider the treatment
of political satire in the shape of cartoons. The Mohammed cartoons
have directed an unintentional trend, which will influence the legacy
of political cartoons for years to come. Representatives of the political
radical right have perhaps gained too much by the publication of the
Muhammad drawings. Examples such as the Finnish publications,
certainly indicate that one either enters the path of controversial and
potentially harmful satire or does not walk the path at all.

105

On the other hand, representatives of the left have won too much
as well. By continuously nominating critical cartoons, the labeling of
political correctness suffers from severe inflation and free speech will
act as a counter-argument against those who are in fact passionate
about this issue.
Regardless of ones ideological positioning, all drawings, cartoons,
pictures, which portray religious, social, racial perhaps even sexual
minorities, are clouded by the Muhammad cartoons.

106

CHRONOLOGY OF MAIN EVENTS

2001 May
2005 June

2005 August
2005 Sept.
2005 Sept.
2005 Oct.

2005 Oct.

2005 Oct.
2005 Dec.

2006 Jan.
2006 Jan.
2006 Feb.

2006 March
2008 Feb.

The Mona Sheikh Story.

Islam critical author, Kre Bluitgen, complains that
he cannot find an illustrator for his new book on
Islam.
News Agency Ritzaus Bureau, writes about Bluitgens
problems finding an illustrator.
Jyllands-Posten initiates a project to test selfcensorship among cartoonists in Denmark.
Jyllands-Posten publishes the results (30 September).
Organization of Islamic Conference (15 October) and
11 Ambassadors (12 October) send a letter to the
Danish Prime Minister about anti-Islamic developments in Denmark.
The prime minister sends a letter in response
(22 October).
The prime minister gives a big interview to JyllandsPosten. 30 October
Two groups of Muslim representatives travel to the
Middle East to talk about the cartoons and the denial
of dialogue.
Norwegian Christian Magazinet publishes the
cartoons (10 January).
Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen is interviewed on Al-Arabiya (30 January)
Danish Christian delegation travels to Cairo to
meet with Muslim leaders, politicians, and MuslimChristian dialogue groups.
The Prime Minister gives a big interview to Belingske
Tidende (26 March).
Danish Police arrest three North African men for
plotting a murder of cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.
Seventeen Danish newspapers publish (or re-publish)
one or more of the original cartoons in connection to
these arrests.

107

SUMMARY
The publication of the Muhammad cartoons did not hit Denmark out
of the blue. In the summer of 2001 another anti-Islamic media event
occurred with several of the same key writers of articles in JyllandsPosten in the front seat. In ousting young Danish born Muslims with
Pakistani background from political influence journalists used sources
in the global arena to contest the young Muslims but without creating
a global news story. Yet earlier, an unprecedented tabloid newspaper
campaign filled the Danish media with a debate that was no less
confrontational in content and form than the two later ones. The first
chapter provides the socio-historical background leading up to the
publication on 30 September 2005.
The second chapter situates the cartoons within Jyllands-Postens
recent history of anti-Islamic representations, promoting an image of
Islam that resonates well with the majority of the Danish population.
As breaking news of global cartoon violence shifted the focus of
attention from Jyllands-Posten to the Danish state, the government
struggled for damage control after its unfortunate decision not to
meet with 11 ambassadors of Muslim countries about the potential
damaging effect of the cartoons in the Muslim world. By insisting that
the cartoon issue is all about freedom of speech and blaming Danish
imams for stirring up violent reactions, the government sought to
change the focus from the confrontational and disrespectful cartoons
to a discussion based on who has free speech and who does not. In
this political spin, Denmark and Jyllands-Posten have done nothing
wrong. Instead the problem was represented as being the reactions in
the Muslim world. To those who had misunderstood the cartoon issue
and become offended, the government and Jyllands-Posten apologized.
The Danish government has attempted to understand and control
the intended meanings in these terms, but has only been successful in
the domestic setting, where the political spin resonates well with the
large majority of the Danish voters. But in the global arena the spin
is unsuccessful. In addition a counter discourse emerged already in
2005 and gained ground by revealing the neo-conservative connection
and radical right vantage point of a powerful chunk of writers in
Jyllands-Posten, Berlingske Tidende and the tabloid papers, who

108

have in common that they are anti-Islamic and use freedom of speech
against Islam. Originally, the founding fathers of Danish democracy
intended freedom of speech as means to protect vulnerable groups,
like the Muslims in Denmark, against power holders such as the state,
hegemonic groups, and the mass media.
In chapter three I discuss what a focus on identity, ethnicity and
ethnic conflict can tell us about the cartoon conflict. Through a critical
discussion of different theoretical approaches to identity (ethnic and
religious in particular), I argue that identity issues must always be
situated in their proper context, which includes the prevailing relations
and power. Accordingly, ethnicity, for example, can never be an
independent explanatory dimension. When these criteria are applied
to the Danish cartoon conflict (in this chapter to the media coverage
and consumer responses) it becomes clear that popular and mediatized
representations of Muslims are social constructions of identity, which
are different from how Muslims understand their identities.
Much global media coverage and most academic treatments of the
Muhammad cartoon crisis ignore the role of the Danish government
in their explanations of why the crisis turned global and violent.
In October 2005 the Danish prime minister, backed by politicians
of the right and left, denied 10 Muslim and 1 Christian ambassador representing 730 million citizens a meeting to talk about the
Danish public debate on Muslims. The Prime Minister, Anders Fogh
Rasmussen, refused to meet with the ambassadors and argued in what
is considered a winning political spin that he could not interfere in the
editorial process of the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which published
the 12 cartoons on 30 September 2006. Rasmussens interpretation
of the letter echoed Jyllands-Postens insistence on a non-dialogue,
no-compromise, and no-apology approach to their concerns. The
political spin following his answer developed as a distinction between
the good countries with free speech, and the bad countries without free
speech and democratic values. In response to the refusal to meet with
the ambassadors, Danish imams turned to their religious and political
authorities to inform them about their problems obtaining recognition and dialogue with the Danish authorities. Later, the Danish
government attacked the Danish imams for traveling to the Middle
East to stir up trouble, political support, violent demonstrations, and
economic boycotts.
When the global violence escalated in February 2006 the
government, in its own words, found itself in the worst foreign policy
crisis since WWII. One of the initiatives taken to soften the crisis was
to send a Christian delegation to Egypt to contact Christian-Muslim

109

dialogue groups, promote dialogue, and to talk down the growing

discontent with the Danish and Western cavalier attitudes towards
the Muslim world. This raises several inter-related questions, which
are addressed in chapter four. How do we explain this contradiction
between insisting on non-dialogue with cultural minorities in Denmark,
while at the same time turning to dialogue initiatives elsewhere in
order to prevent further conflict? What is the conflict about and who
are the primary actors? The chapter takes a close look at this apparent
contradiction between the practice of dialogue promotion in Egypt
and non-dialogue in Denmark.

110

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ENDNOTES
1 This late entry and perhaps because of Klausens vantage point
on the East Coast of North America, she ends up with a series
of minor errors that so to speak falls under the radar. In one of
Jyllands-Postens cartoons, she wrongly depicts Muhammad as a
soccer fan Fremad Amager (instead of Frem Valby), while another
error appears in the statement that Parliamentary Louise Frevert
was convicted for her Islam tumor analogy, which she was not.
2 N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783 1872) is one of the most influential and
important figures in formulating Danish cultural nationalism in
the last half of the 19th century. Grundtvig was a politician, pastor,
poet, historian, author and several other professions.
3 Generally speaking, he Swedish media often represents Denmark as
rabidly xenophobic and intolerant, while the Danish news media
presents the Swedish state and the Swedish people as politically
correct and afraid of calling things by their right name (Hedetoft,
Peterson and Sturfelt 2006).
4 For at comparison of the media coverage of the Danish Peoples
Party and the Sweden Democrats in the mid to late 2000, see
Hellstrm and Hervik (2011)
5 B.T. was originally short for the tabloid version of Berlingske
Tidende. But B.T. is today a newspaper with a different intended
audience and independent editorial leadership. B.T. is the
proper name and is not used anymore as an abbreviation.
6 Even though the word Venstre in Danish is literally left,
the party Venstre is a rightwing party. The deceiving name is a
remnant of the late 19th century simple political division between
the National Liberals and Estate owners, who created a political
party, Hjre (Right), and opposed by the peasant party referred to
as Venstre.
7 Even if the news media position itself as objective, it still become
actors in the political sphere (Arno 2009), but here is a newspapers
that have gone farther explicitly articulating and promoting
different nationalist narratives as part of the news package they
sell to consumers.

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8 Signe Toft studied this story as a researcher in the Structuring

Diversity team research project that lead to the publication
Den generende forskellighed (Hervik 1999). Unless otherwise
indicated, the story draws on Toft (1999).
9 Idara Minhaj ul-Quran is an international Sufi revivalist movement
that seeks to combine Sufi mystical practices, religious orthodoxy,
and education. This non-political and non-sectarian movement
seeks to revive the message of the Quran and the Sunnah within a
modern and moderate framework that promotes welfare, establish
Muslim Womens movements, the Muslim youth, and interfaith
dialogue. Perhaps the most prominent member was Benazar
Bhutto (Geaves 2005, see also Minhaj-ul-Quran website).
10 The editorial about Afghanistan is written after 21 million
Afghanis had been declared losers in the war with the Taliban. The
Mujahedin was economically supported and militarily equipped
by Western countries and Saudi Arabia (Coll 2007), including
an amount from a Danish youth committee that comprise a
leading minister of the contemporary government, Lars Lkke
Rasmussen and leader of the radical right Danish Peoples Party,
Pia Kjrsgaard (Hervik 2011).
11 Although fear of the Talibans disapproval of Sufism may have
shaped the organizations insistence on its orthodoxy, Minhaj is
not in fact linked to either the Taliban or to any Pakistani political
party, although it promotes student involvement in politics (Geaves
2005: 12).
12 In practical terms the retraction is a text, TV-avisen had to read
and bring on the screen. It appeared at the end of the prime time
news, where it took less than a minute to read.
13 In the wake of the Muhammad cartoon crisis Brix financial
and ideological connections with American neoconservativism
came clear. For instance, in her role as speaker for the Benedor
Associates, and the Free Speech Society, who granted cultural
editor Flemming Rose, cartoonists Kurt Westergaard, anti-Islamist
Daniel Pipes, and Muslim apostate Ibn Waraq free speech prices.
(Hervik 2008)
14 The existence of this women being forced into wearing the scarf
and the double standards of sexual practices and norms are
undeniable. However, they are not specific to Muslims, say even
a general attribute of Muslims, but can be found in other cultures
and religions as well including the Western world.
15 A curious fact can be introduced here. About 85 % of the Danes
are members of the Danish protestant church. Only 1-2 % attends

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Church regularly. If Danes considered themselves relaxed, or say

nominal Christians, it is interesting to know that 31 % believes in
reincarnation (Hervik 2002).
16 Seeing Islam as incompatible with Danish values can also be seen
in the political program of the Danish Peoples Party in 2001, as
the party completed a shift from a focus on the economic consequences of migrant presence to an emphasis on their cultural
values (see Meret 2010).
17 Rose had been a left-winger himself like many other neoconservatives (Hervik 2008).
18 Karen Jespersen was at the time member of the Social Democratic
Party. Later, she completed her remarkable journey that started
with the revolutionary, Marxist, democratic, and socialist
party called the Left Socialist Party (Venstresocialisterne) and
ended Minister of Social Welfare for the right-wing liberal party,
Venstre.
19 Borg also fails to note that Magaard is a radical right anti-islamic
commentator.
20 Westergaard offered these reflections in an interview several
months after the publication and after the story broke out in the
global media scene (Thomsen 2006). Elsewhere, he admitted that
his cartoon is the most controversial of the 12 cartoons (Hansen
and Hundevadt 2006).
21 Vollsmose is a part of Odense on the island of Funen with a large
population of immigrants and descendants.
22 According to Arno (2009) such an event is a pseudo-event and
not a real event. However, this example shows precisely, how this
distinction hide the fact that most news pieces are approached
and created as through a specific angle that immediately
constructs an event to become something it may not have been
before, namely, news. In the cartoon case Jyllands-Posten created
the project, which in Arnos word would be a real event with
dire and multiple effects.
23 Although I use discourse analysis and frame analysis interchangeably, they do come from two different traditions and are
only roughly overlapping. Frame analysis came out in media and
communication studies (Entmann 1993, de Vreese 2005) and focus
mostly on the specific linguistic choices chosen to present a story
and the cognitive schemas used in making sense of these frames.
In this way frame analysis has much in common with cultural
studies and its focus on production, distribution and reception
of meaning (Hervik 2011). These specific frames can be seen as

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tools for the larger discourses that Focault was theorizing. Such
discourses that constitutes the objects of which they speak pay
little attention to alternative discourses or how discourses take are
responded to. They are larger regimes of truth. They are domains
of power, and such to be looked at in relation to institutionalized
power and hegemonic social groups.
24 The journalist-as-hero comes out with full force in discussion early
January 2007 when the prestigious Danish price for journalist,
the Cavling Price, was given. Many journalists wanted cultural
editor, Flemming Rose to be given the price, for his defense of
free speech, yet it was given to others for revealing the pitiful
conditions of asylum seekers children.
25 In February 2010 editor-in-chief, Tger Seidenfaden apologized
for offending Muslims by publishing the cartoon.
26 The Blame the imam strategy contains sub-blames such as the 11
ambassadors (the Egyptian ambassador in particular), who turned
to their home governments for advice, thereby contributing to the
globalization of the cartoon publication. Lack of space prevents
me from unfolding the hierarchy of sub-blames within the three
sets of blames.
27 In November 2006 Sheikh Hlayhel returned to Lebanon.
28 In another IT-piece Vidino includes the blame on the imams
strategy in his subtitle Creating Outrage: Meet the imam behind
the cartoon overreaction. (2006). From the beginning it is unclear
which of the imams, he is referring to in the title, but it is not
Sheikh Hlayhel but Abu Laban (Vidino 2006).
29 Daniel Pipes also received a free speech price by the Danish
islamophobic Free Speech Society (Hervik 2008).
30 The absence of stories about how Egyptians were offended by the
cartoons in Al Faqr has not been researched. There are no indications as to what kind of responses, by whom, when, and even why
not this is the case in any of the sources. The Danish Embassy
in Cairo did register an increase of incoming protest mails of a
different kind than earlier though not in substantial numbers.
31 On 31 January 2007 the Prime Minister did go out to criticize a
documentary by a journalist with Denmarks Radio, one of the
public service stations, that was critical of the government. In a
Parliamentary debate, the Prime Minister also argued that criticism
of the governments criticism was an attempt to impose restrictions
on free speech (Folketinget 2007). Thus, the Prime Ministers act
of criticizing the documentary broadcasted by Denmarks Radio is
exerting free speech.

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32 This is also the case of Bernard Lewis (1990), who is another

prominent political scientist and senior advisor to the US
government.
33 According to author and senior editor of Newsweek, Michael
Hirsch, Bernard Lewis model for the Middle East is much like
Kemal Ataturks imposition of puritanical secularism. Today, that
Epiphany Lewiss Kemalist vision of a secularized, Westernized
Arab democracy that casts off the medieval shackles of Islam and
enters modernity at last remains the core of George W. Bushs
faltering vision in Iraq (2004:1-2). Lewis pressed the government
to move on to confront Saddam Hussein in co-op pieces in The
Wall Street Journal. He saw 9/11 as the opening salvo of the
nature of Islam, now it was time to get on with it implying
using military means to impose a Kemalist time of Islamic
democracy, one that didnt compromise for any Islamized version
of democracy (Hirsh 2004).
34 Elsewhere, I have looked at how clash of civilization subscribers
relate to a Danish community of neoconservatives, who form a
strong core group in many newspaper articles during the cartoon
controversy. The group was responsible for a substantial part of
the dominant discourse Freedom of speech as a Danish freedom
dealt with in the previous chapter (Hervik 2008, Hervik 2011).
35 The fact that most Somalis were also Muslims was rarely
mentioned. But four years later during the Mona Sheikh affair in
May 2001, Muslims did become the new cultural others in the
political strengthening of Danish core values (Hervik 2011).
36 Although I wont go into it here, this is where neoracism of the
micro-level collides with the micro-level narrative of a clash of
civilizations.
37 Jytte Klausen rightly points out that the Cuban missile crisis in
1962 and the 1973-74 oil crisis, when Denmark and Holland
was singled out for particular penalties by the Arab oil-producing
countries because of a prime ministers incautious words about
Israel and ended up freezing and with carless Sundays. (1999:5).
38 Islamophia exploded with the idea being that there is something
about Arabs and Muslims that make them capable of carrying out
such acts as 9/11with the assumption that any association with
Arab or Muslim with threats against our personal security as the
lynchpin of Islamophobia (Lentin 2008:xv).

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39 According to the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

The main objective of the Partnership is to establish the basis for
a strengthened dialogue with countries in the wider Middle East
regionfrom Morocco in the west to Iran in the east. The dialogue
should be based on common values that have formed our relations
through more than two millennia. After the enlargement of the
European Union, the role of the Mediterranean and the Middle
East is in focus as regions to which Europe should build closer
relations. (Danish-Arab Parnership Programme 2009).
The Partnership illustrates a connection between combating
terror, development aid, and national security that has emerged
in Denmark since the late 1990s. The logic is that through the
promotion of dialogue and democracy, terrorist recruitment of
poor and relatively deprived people will diminish. According to
the Danish debate, the development aid was also meant to prevent
more migrants and refugees from coming to Denmark.
The government will use these funds in a targeted way to counteract
the threats caused by the increasing gap between particularly the
Western world and the Arab world, including the launch of special
activities to combat the underlying causes of terrorism and for
activities to promote modernization and democratization in the
Arab countries. (Danida 2003).
40 Alawqaf is the religious institution that annually distributes the
charity money gathered from Muslims called khums and zakat to
poor people.
41 Danish imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen made a similar suggestion 12
October 2005 on Al Jazeera.
42 Arabic speakers would recognize this as an indirect evocation of
a Western, American, and Zionist conspiracy against the Arabic
world.
43 Honneth builds on Emmanuel Kant and George Herbert Mead
(Fraser and Honneth 1993, Honneth 1996, Mead 1934, and
Taylor 1994).
44 Vibeke Vindelv has pointed out, this shows that the Danish prime
minister has not understood the gist of dialogue. Entering into
dialogue does not mean giving up the democratic ideals refined
over hundreds of years. Democratic ideals can be defended even
while you acknowledge that the cartoons are offending Muslims
and others; and denying dialogue constitutes a lack of recognition,
which fuels outrage and dramatic reactions (Rnnow 2006).
Vindelv did not consider, whether the prime minister wanted the
dialogue or not.

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IMER MIM

is a publication series that presents current research in the multidisciplinary field

of International Migration and Ethnic Relations. Articles are published in Swedish
and English. They are available in print and online (www.mah.se/muep).

CURRENT THEMES IN IMER RESEARCH 13

CURRENT THEMES IN IMER RESEARCH

CURRENT THEMES
IN IMER RESEARCH
NUMBER 13
The Danish Muhammad Cartoon Conflict

Peter Hervik

Sweden
tel: +46 46 665 70 00
www.mah.se

MALM 2012

SE-205 06 Malm

MALM 2012

MALM UNIVERSIT Y